Mr. Pádraig Dalton:

As always, the devil is in the detail. The year 2016 was an atypical one because it was a census year. As the Deputy will be aware, for the census of population, we recruit a significant number of staff for a short period of time.

Throughout 2017, staff were redeployed out of the CSO. This is the normal cyclical change in the number of staff in the CSO. In the period up to a census year, we build up and in the year after the census, we begin to lose staff. If I talk about our core numbers, excluding census, the underlying direction of travel for staffing numbers in the CSO is in an upward direction. Part of the problem we have had, which I alluded to in my report, is that the type of skill sets for which we are looking in particular involve data analysts and those on the IT or technology front. As members will be aware, the labour market for data analysts is very competitive so it is difficult to get as many data analysts in-----