Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 3 June 2021
Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Estimates for Public Services 2021 (Resumed)
Vote 1 - President's Establishment (Revised)
Vote 2 - Department of the Taoiseach (Revised)
Vote 3 - Office of the Attorney General (Revised)
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised)
Vote 5 - Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (Revised)
Vote 6 - Office of the Chief State Solicitor (Revised)
Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source
It will have an expanded role. Through the NSB, we have set out a new strategy for 2021 to 2026. It has been authorised. At its launch in recent weeks, I spoke about having trusted and independent sources of data. I am trying to embed some of the key priorities that the CSO has set out. We will support those priorities, for example, monitoring transformations in the environment, economy and society to assist policymakers, communicating data and taking action to enhance official statistics and sources. Embedding Eircode postcodes in all public sector data holdings is work the NSB wants to drive forward, and the CSO will have an important involvement in that. Big data has a potentially valuable role in the compilation of official statistics.
Although we are discussing this year's Vote, I can go into more detail on the strategic direction, which is about using many of the other official data sources and how that informs our public policymaking and decision-making. With the NSB, the CSO will move in an ambitious direction. We can forward the 2021-26 strategic report that was set out by the NSB. It is important we support and fund the strategy, and that is our intention.
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