Mr. Pádraig Dalton:

Yes. The legal obligation always exists. Unfortunately, sometimes we must take companies to court to make them comply with the CSO's data requirements.

We had a case recently in which we spent eight years in the courts with a company, during which period we did not get any data from it. Imagine if that had been one of the larger players in the Irish economy. We would not be in a position to compile accurate or robust national accounts data or business statistics data if any one of those larger multinationals decided not to engage with us. It goes beyond the multinational companies as well. Businesses in Ireland and Irish people, even the small and medium sized enterprises would, in our view, be concerned at the possibility that their data would be shared with 27 other statistical authorities across the EU, not all of which are national statistical institutes. Our big concern is that there would be any reduction in compliance with our business statistical surveys, which feed in directly to the compilation of the national accounts, and in some cases the balance of payments as well.