Mr. Pádraig Dalton:

One of the key issues here is what they call the asymmetries. For example, Ireland's exports to Germany should match Germany's imports from Ireland. When we do the asymmetries between imports and exports, there is a discrepancy of €3 trillion at EU level. There is a whole range of reasons for that. All member states are planning to continue to collect import and export data until such a point as they are satisfied that the asymmetries issue has been addressed. It is a huge issue. Germany's exports to Ireland are relatively small as a proportion of its overall total exports. For that reason, the Germans do not sample to the scale that we would need to get the relative accuracy of the import data that we would require or the export data we have for Germany. The big countries will be forced to over-sample to try to ensure the quality not of their statistics but of the statistics for smaller member States such as Ireland, Malta and so on. That is not specifically addressed in the legislation. It is questionable whether the quality issue will be addressed.

The quality issue they are talking about really involves trying to get a better handle on globalisation. Ireland is in a very lucky situation in that the national statistical institute, the CSO, compiles the balance of payments, trade statistics, structural business statistics and the short-term statistics, and we have a legal right of access to the administrative data. That means that in our large cases unit, we can compare the data from those multiple sources at unit record level. Where there is an error or where we see an inconsistency in the reporting, we go back to the company and flag the issue and ask them to explain it to us. That is how we assure the quality of our data.

The vast majority of national statistical institutes do not compile the balance of payment statistics. In most countries it is the national central bank that does so. Only in the last two years has the legislation been passed at European level allowing some national statistics institutes access to administrative data. In practice, it is not happening in some of those countries. The trade data is not always compiled by the national statistical institute. Our experience says that if we do not have access to those five data sources or a large cases unit addressing potential inconsistencies in the data, we cannot be sure of having nationally consistent data and a full picture.

Now we are in a situation in which our import data would be based on data from 27 other member states, yet we know that some of those countries do not have access to all of those relevant data sources. We cannot be sure of the quality of data from different countries and they cannot be sure about us. They are all very professional organisations, there is absolutely no question about that. The problem for a lot of them is access to the data. They do not have access to the same level of data that we have in trying to build a coherent picture. If we want to address globalisation, which is one of the stated objectives of this commission, we need access to all of that data at micro level, not at aggregate level. We need to be able to see the picture at individual company level.