Mr. Cormac Halpin:

My particular area of expertise is the census. Mr Culhane or Ms O'Riordan might want to come in on other parts of the CSO. The census uses the phrase "privacy by design". It is integrated into every part of the census from the enumerators going out delivering and collecting the forms, returning the forms back to the CSO securely and the processing of the data. That is the phase we just finished from the 2022 census. In the CSO, and particularly the census which is our biggest interface with the public, we recognise that breaches of confidentiality or privacy could be fatal to the census, and that if people do not expect their data will be treated in a fully private manner, they will be less inclined to comply with the next census. As I said earlier, reduced coverage rates in the census fatally impacts on the quality of the data. Therefore, we put huge stress on ensuring that people's privacy is respected.

On the process for the questions themselves, as I outlined earlier, we launch a public consultation, which we did towards the end of last year where we advertised that the census 2027 questionnaire was being looked at again for change. We advertised that on social media, on our website and in national newspapers. We also wrote to a wide range of data users and stakeholders. They were invited to make submissions on the census questionnaire for 2027 on the changes they want made. We have received 400 submissions on that from a very wide range of organisations across the board. The next phase will be to appoint a census advisory group which will be the ultimate decision-making body that will make recommendations to the Government on what questions, and what revised questions, will be included in 2027. It is in the remit of that census advisory group to appoint subgroups of subject matter experts - they do not necessarily have to sit on the plenary body - to look at individual questions, take it out of that forum and spend more time teasing through what the user requirements are and to make sure the questions themselves are acceptable to the users and comply with different international standards or norms that might apply to the different questions on the census form. Those subgroups report back to the census advisory group which then makes recommendations about what questions should be pilot tested. We have had a long-standing convention in the census whereby we do not include a question on a census form unless it has been successfully pilot tested. By successfully pilot tested, I mean that it has been comprehended by the public involved in the pilot, that the response rates have been high and that there has not been adverse feedback from the public that have been involved in those pilot tests. The census advisory group will have sight of all of that when they reconvene after the census pilot which will take place in September 2024. Ultimately, it makes decisions which it puts to the Government on what questions should be included in the census. We would expect that process would take place around the middle of 2025. The Government ultimately has sign-off on the census questionnaire.

We do it through that really detailed engagement with users. As I said earlier, the CSO is very reliant on users and subject-matter experts around the census to help guide us and ensure that we comply with primarily their needs but also international norms around data collection. We also have very close contact particularly with the other English-speaking countries around how they frame their questions and on the consultations they have done because a lot of the issues that would apply to us have applied to other countries as well. We are driven by users and subject-matter experts in how we frame the census questionnaire to make sure the questions comply with norms and what is needed.