Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 2 and 3 together.

The 2011 census is being organised and carried out by the Central Statistics Office, CSO. The fieldwork is being undertaken by field staff directly recruited by the office while the results will be processed by CSO staff in the CSO census office located in Swords, County Dublin.

The census is a major undertaking for the CSO and contractors have been appointed to assist with specialised parts of the work. An outside contractor, CACI (UK) Limited, was awarded the €6.7 million contract following a public procurement process to provide the CSO with an integrated forms processing system. CACI (UK) Limited specified and procured the hardware, software and subcontracted the printing of census forms optimised for scanning by the system. The system will be managed and operated by CSO staff, with the technical support of a small number of CACI (UK) Limited employees to process the completed census forms in the second half of this year. The completed census forms, and any resultant databases of the returns created during the processing, will at all stages be completely under the control of the CSO and subject to the stringent confidentiality requirements of the Statistics Act 1993.

The selection of the contractor was subject to, and complied fully with, European Union open procurement rules. CACI (UK) Limited has developed specialist skills in the area of high-volume forms processing systems and won a similar contract for the 2002 and 2006 censuses. No allegations have been made in respect of any direct involvement by CACI (UK) Limited in the types of activities mentioned by the Deputy.

However, the CSO is aware that in spring 2004 an allegation was made that an employee of CACI International - which is the parent company of CACI (UK) Limited, based in the United States - was involved in the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq. CACI (UK) Limited states that this allegation was not substantiated by any evidence or proof at the time it was made, and subsequent investigations by both CACI International and the United States Government could not confirm it. CACI International has stated publicly that it takes this allegation extremely seriously, that it does not condone, tolerate or endorse any illegal behaviour by its employees in any circumstances or at any time, and that it has held in the past, and always will hold, itself to the highest ethical standards.

As a public body, the Central Statistics Office is fundamentally committed to ethical and proper conduct in all matters and would never consider any dealings with a company convicted of human rights abuse. European Union procurement rules allow bidders to be excluded if they have been convicted of certain criminal or other offences. However, as none of these exclusions applies to CACI (UK) Limited, or to its United States parent, the CSO has retained the services of CACI (UK) Limited to assist in the efficient processing of the 2011 census returns.

Everybody in this House should be encouraging every household to participate fully in the census and to visit the census website to get a feel for the enormous benefits the census information will bring to Ireland in the coming years.

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