Peadar Tóibín
Question:85. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment the number of SMEs that have closed in County Meath in each of the past ten years. [12168/26]
View answerThursday, 19 February 2026
Questions (85)
Written answers
The information available to my Department relates to companies registered with the Companies Registration Office (CRO) but does not include businesses operating as sole traders or unincorporated entities.
Businesses can close for a variety of reasons and the information available to the CRO relates to filings of those companies voluntarily struck off the companies register and those notifying the CRO when entering liquidation.
Voluntary strike-off is available to a company that ceases to trade, or has never traded, has no assets in excess of €150 and has no outstanding creditors. It should be noted that liquidation cover situations where a company may be solvent, and pursue a members' voluntary liquidation, or insolvent and is subject to a creditors' voluntary liquidation or a Court ordered liquidation.
I am informed by the Registrar of Companies that she is unable to provide an accurate breakdown on the number of SMEs that have closed in the past ten years. The obligation to identify company size (micro, small, medium, or large) is in a company's annual return and this requirement was introduced by the Companies Act 2014 (Forms) Regulations 2018 (S.I. No. 95 of 2018). Whilst a company must have all outstanding annual returns up to date when applying for a voluntary strike-off, a company is not required to submit annual returns where a liquidator is appointed and as result, a company's' annual return may not be up to date and the information on size is not available to the Registrar.
The data provided by the CRO in relation to company closures in county Meath for the past ten years is set out in the table below.
|
Year |
Liquidations |
Voluntary strike-off |
Total |
|
2016 |
30 |
136 |
166 |
|
2017 |
23 |
182 |
205 |
|
2018 |
25 |
184 |
209 |
|
2019 |
44 |
252 |
296 |
|
2020 |
30 |
161 |
191 |
|
2021 |
15 |
208 |
223 |
|
2022 |
40 |
215 |
255 |
|
2023 |
42 |
183 |
225 |
|
2024 |
65 |
179 |
244 |
|
2025 |
57 |
207 |
264 |