Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 11 April 2019

Public Accounts Committee

2017 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office

9:00 am

Mr. Pádraig Dalton:

If it continued, it could be a problem but right now, it is not a problem. We are well resourced. The Deputy can see that we have the money. The problem is more about getting the staff. We have changed our approach to the recruitment of statisticians. We are running those competitions ourselves now, which has proved far more successful over the past couple of iterations. The technology side will also be difficult. The technology is almost more difficult than the data analytical side. We are experiencing more difficulties in getting the technological staff we need. As the Deputy is aware, the nature of the skill sets in technology changes very quickly as technology develops so that might be the area where we have some issues. I am quite confident on the data analytical side that we will get the staff.