Professor Alan Barrett:

A formal relationship between the ESRI and the committee would be possible and is something we can explore. There would be no problem if the relationship involved relatively minor inputs such as ESRI staff presenting on various issues. That is part of our public good remit. If the committee wanted to have pieces of work done, that would be possible and we would be happy to engage in those discussions. I hate mentioning money, but that is an issue that would accompany it. I am not allowed to go back to headquarters unless that message is well understood. We can have discussions and there are possibilities.

There is an issue as to whether data are being collected. The situation in Scandinavia is different because there is the tracking of individuals. I attended a presentation recently with the head of the Danish statistics office. He said their census was run by two guys and that it took them about one week to complete. They do not have to go out and count everybody because they have data for everybody. They have phenomenal data which are collected over time. They are not just for their income and wealth but also their engagement with the health system and so forth. They have very different ways of doing it for historical reasons. We do not have that level of data available .However, more data are being collected over time. The wealth issue is one on which we typically did not collect data in Ireland, but that gap is being plugged through the Central Statistics Office and the Central Bank. From an ESRI perspective, we find the CSO very accommodating. Subject to the rules of data protection, it generally tries to facilitate us with data it has available. If the data are available, we have good access to them.

Professor John McHale and his colleagues will talk about their more direct interactions with the Department of Finance.