Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The CSO is under the Department of the Taoiseach and the economic policy unit has traditionally been responsible for overseeing its work. The Taoiseach will have noticed two members of his Government have recently been caught out promoting misleading and potentially fake statistics. The Minister for Social Protection recently launched a national media campaign on a claim concerning welfare fraud which overstated savings by over 1,000%. The Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government has been promoting his record on the basis of a claim on new builds which inflates the true figure by 100%.

Clearly those Ministers are actively trying to promote their images and enhance their profiles. It is also fair to say, however, this type of behaviour is also seen elsewhere in government. In the hours before the budget was announced, €300 million suddenly appeared in spite of the insistence of Ministers that they had been fully transparent with the figures. Taken all together, one can only conclude that Ministers are deliberately using misleading and untrue statistics or they are failing to check their figures before issuing their various press releases.

Has the Taoiseach taken any action to stop this growing habit of making misleading false claims about official statistics?

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