Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I would like to help those backbenchers who tried to confuse the matter by referring to private households and holiday homes, etc. by telling them how "household" was defined on the census form in 2011. According to a Central Statistics Office document released on that occasion:

In the census, a private household is defined as either one person living alone or a group of people living at the same address with common housekeeping arrangements. A household can contain one or more families.

That makes it clear that these are people living in these houses. There are 1.654 million such households. Can the Minister confirm that he accepts the census and what was said in it?

Will the Minister confirm that he accepts the CSO's census figure that there was this amount of households in 2011?

If Deputies read the release, they will note that, in the past 20 years, the number of households has increased by more than 60%. These figures are nearly four years out of date. If we are in line with the past two decades' trends, this number has also increased rapidly and we are not referring to a gap of just 350,000 households. It is likely to be more because of the increase in the population. Will the Minister accept that these households exist? If he does, is it the case that, based on his own figures, he expects 22% non-compliance with Irish Water? The gap between the census figure and the Government's suggests 22% non-registration. I believe that the level will be much higher, but I would like the Government to enlighten us on these two basic facts. Does the Minister believe that the households are there and is he assuming or guessing that there will be 22% non-compliance, meaning that the Government will only have to pay the €100 to 78% of the households that existed in 2011?

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