Mr. Stephen O'Shea:

I thank Deputy Ó Murchú. Obviously there is always more we would like to learn from the polling. To a certain degree, like any opinion polling, we are restricted in a certain sense. For us it is really valuable because each year we look at priorities that are topical. It is a really valuable test of sentiment for us in terms of guiding our own work, and guiding our citizen engagement that arises from it. We do try to drill down in that way. For example, on energy and the cost of living we are running four events around the country on energy with the European Commission over the winter. The sentiment and the findings in the polling will guide our engagement through those events.

Likewise, to give another example on the euro question, what we can try to do as well is to match it up with other research. Since we last asked that question support for the euro has fallen by about 14%. If one matches that there is some research from Lund University that postulates that support for the common currency is linked to employment and inflation. That insight will guide our work on those issues over the period ahead. It is very difficult to drill down into why certain figures in Connacht-Ulster might be lower or why we see across a lot of questions the middle age brackets being less supportive than other age groups. Anecdotally we know that is pretty consistent with a lot of opinion polling. If we look back at some of the research that has been done on the Brexit referendum, yes there was an element of a left behind marginalised group, but there was also an issue in that squeezed middle or whatever one wants to call that group. Scepticism was a factor in Brexit and I think that you see it in political polling as well. It is not a perfect science, as politicians know well, but it is very useful in terms of guiding our own work, evaluating that the issues that we are focusing on are those which are relevant to public sentiment at a point in time. I hope that is helpful.