Pat Carey (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

I would not go all the way with what Deputy Barrett is suggesting. He should not forget that we have a fairly significant body of disability legislation, which was enacted by this House in recent years. The national disability database together with other pieces of legislation, such as the EPSEN Act, have been progressively implemented. They are the principal vehicles whereby the type of information the Deputy is talking about would be compiled.

As regards how questions for inclusion in the census form are chosen, all EU member states will be conducting censuses in 2011 in compliance with an EU regulation, which is the first covering censuses. All member states have to cover a number of core questions and are also bound to produce their outputs according to standard methodology agreed at EU level. If the Deputy has time to consult the website, he will see the core questions that have to be asked. There are also other non-core questions, which each member state can frame in its own way.

As regards the deficit of statistics on persons with autism, the Central Statistics Office suggests that it is simply not possible to collect statistics concerning specific disabilities on a census form. Indeed, it is not realistic to collect information on specific individual disabilities on any household survey. The range and enormously diverse nature of illness and disability are not suited to survey collection. It is more appropriate to gather such data from administrative records. That is constantly improving because one of the issues that arose when I met the officers in the Central Statistics Office was the matter of how else it could be done if it could not be done in the census. The CSO publishes over 300 statistical releases and publications each year. It provides high quality statistical information which is a vital input to planning for the future and monitoring outcomes at national, regional and local levels. The CSO has, for some time, promoted greater use of objective statistical information in evidence-based policy making across all areas of public services, including those relating to intellectual disability. In this regard, it is a matter for each Department to set out and prioritise its own statistical data needs.

In response to Deputy Barrett, because there is merit in the idea, I will arrange for the CSO officials responsible for the census to meet the appropriate committee as soon as possible so that some of the concerns the Deputy and other Members have raised can be dealt with. Their concerns are not without value, but there is no point in suggesting the next census can be revisited. In the meantime we could consider how we can get more specific data and how we can prepare for the following census.

See this speech in context