Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There is a different model with the CSO. The economic unit of the Department deals with certain administrative functions and supports the Minister of State, Deputy Regina Doherty.

It deals with regular parliamentary questions. The CSO is an independent national institute dealing with statistics. The Statistics Act 1993 underpins that. The Act provides the director general will have the sole responsibility for and be independent in the exercise of the functions of deciding the statistical methodology and professional statistical standards used by the office; the content of statistical releases and publications issued by the office; and the timing and methods of dissemination of statistics compiled by the office. The Minister of State, Deputy Regina Doherty and I have no role or function in that.

In that regard, it pointed out from its model that the issue, in so far as house builds are concerned, was that for years Governments have used electricity connections to determine the number.

The Minister will take note of the Central Statistics Office, CSO, figures. The action plan for housing, with the five designated pillars, has an unprecedented extent both of incentive, innovative opportunity and money available to it. We are trying to catch up from a position where the construction sector collapsed completely from building 90,000 houses per year to 9,000 houses per year.

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