Ms Fiona O'Riordan:

We include a question on care in the census. A census is held every five years and we have a very broad consultation in advance of any census. The consultation for census 2027 will start at the end of this year. Many groups, including Family Carers Ireland and the National Disability Authority, would come forward for inclusion on the census. We listen to everybody regarding what needs to be included and take some guidance as well from the national equality data strategy. Obviously, there are a lot of questions this year about whether we include questions on gender identity or sexual orientation so we feel we will be looking at those and will have representations towards the end of the year for the inclusion of those questions on the census in 2027. We take our lead from lots of other people and strategies to make sure it is an inclusive census that is representative of what people want to tell us. The carers question was included in census 2022. It asked about people who provide care outside of employment, that is, who provide it gratis, so we will have the results of that and disaggregate it by sex, etc. We will then be able to match it back to other sources of information. The Chairman mentioned pensions. We should be able to see if we can cross-classify on that.