Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

We are asked every five years to fill out a census form. There was an exception during the Covid period, which pushed us back a year. I always encourage people to do so. We are told through an elaborate advertising campaign on each occasion that the forms need to be filled out so that services can be provided and demographic shifts and the like can be tracked, yet there is very little evidence that census returns are used to have an objective resource allocation approach to decision-making. It is very static.