A COMPANY CREDIT risk company has estimated that 48 per cent of Irish businesses are “showing signs consistent with business failure”.

Vision-net.ie has been assessing the activity of Irish companies during the first three months of 2011. Their “stress tests” on 35,000 companies found that there is €621m in unpaid debt owed by failing companies and that there were 350 meeting of creditors to wind up companies from January to March. They also found that 495 companies had a liquidator appointed in the first three months of the year.

The credit risk assessor group described the situation facing Irish business as a “perfect storm”.

Last Thursday, figures released by InsolvencyJournal.ie showed that a total of 396 went to the wall in the first quarter of 2011. It was slightly down on last year’s Q1 total of 409, but included the high-profile failures of The Sunday Tribune, the Plaza Hotel in Tallaght and the Total Fitness chain of gyms.

The construction sector is still the worst-affected industry for business failure – but retail and hospitality are also suffering badly.