Skip to content

Irish Business Pulse

Business demography

Enterprise deaths

There were 28,750 enterprise deaths in the Republic of Ireland in 2021.

CSO Business Demography · Reference period 2021 · Retrieved 5 July 2026

Latest

28,750

enterprises

year on year

-3.2% ↓

vs 2020

Year on year

-3.2%

vs 2020

Record

Within recent range

Enterprise deathsEnterprise deaths: 5 observations from 2017 to 2021. Range 28,466 to 30,555 enterprises.30,55529,510.528,46620172021
Enterprise deaths - full series. Unit: enterprises.

Full data

Download CSV
Period Value (enterprises)
2021 28,750
2020 29,700
2019 30,555
2018 28,971
2017 28,466

Methodology and source

Annual count of final enterprise deaths from the CSO Business Demography release, resolved from the CSO PxStat API by table and statistic label. An enterprise death is the dissolution of a combination of production factors, excluding exits caused by merger, takeover or restructuring. Only deaths the CSO has confirmed as final (two years of non-reactivation) are included, so the series lags about two years but never overstates closures; preliminary death counts are not mixed in.

Source: CSO Business Demography (table BRA35) · Licence: CC BY 4.0 · Retrieved 5 July 2026.

Read how every Pulse series is built and validated on the methodology page. Reuse this series freely with attribution to Vendors.ie.