Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will have to come back to the Deputy on the import and export details on meat and dairy products just to give him a better answer.

With regard to the business question, we have the labour force survey, LFS, which is produced by the CSO each quarter. This is the official source of estimates of employment in the State. Regional estimates of employment are produced at NUTS level 3, the nomenclature of territorial units for statistics and a standard developed and regulated by Eurostat. It subdivides the economic territory of the State. The population range for each NUTS 3 region is approximately 150,000 to 800,000 people. There are eight of those regions in Ireland. Sample size is a key factor in the accuracy of the survey. Due to the methodology that is applied and the required sample size of that labour force survey, it is not possible to produce reliable county estimates. Whether we can break it down to county level within the country does come up sometimes as a question. The methodology of the service does not permit estimates of employment at levels lower than the regional NUTS 3 level. The census does produce employment figures at county level, but it should be noted there are differences in the methodologies used to produce census employment statistics compared with the estimates from that labour force survey, the NUTS 3 survey, and the more regional survey, including how an individual is classified as employed or not employed. In addition, census figures are only available every five years so it does not provide the level of frequency of the labour force survey, which is done quarterly. Because our census is every five years, the quarterly labour force survey is more accurate although done at a regional level. All of our economic data is peer reviewed by the European statistical organisation. It is important to say this also.