Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I would like to focus the attention of the Minister of State on the accuracy of the figures. I raised this point in the first part of the question. The CSO figures released at the end of last month suggest the increase in employment was not as great as had been stated in March. A number of times, we have seen contradictory figures. Professor John FitzGerald of the ESRI said that this was the first time in 60 years that reliable sectoral employment figures are not available and that unfortunately this was happening just as we are experiencing major problems in a range of other data. That leaves the problem of the system being incorrect or the figures being massaged. The shocking truth is that three years into this Government we have figures that are hard to analyse, volatile jobs figures and where there are trends in job creation, they are, at best, anaemic. I would like to hear the views of the Minister of State. I am sure it is hard for him and his Department to analyse the effectiveness of policy when the sectoral information is, in many cases, untrue.

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