Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I was late to the Chamber and missed the Minister of State's reply. I take it that he is saying that the CSO, for public health reasons, feels it cannot go ahead with the census. That is perfectly understandable in the current circumstances. However, the Government could use the interregnum to prepare for a census to take place a year later and ensure we use the information provided by it. The census offers an enormous wealth of information that is underutilised much of the time. It provides us with enormous detail about the changes that are happening in our society and the changing needs of our society. If we use that information properly, we can plan for the future.

Unfortunately, there is often no joined-up thinking in terms of the information that is provided. The census tells us about birth rates, for example, and it should tell us about the infrastructure we need for childcare, education and housing. It should allow us to plan for those things, if we are using that information properly and linking it to our policy objectives and plans. However, that does not happen. Looking back to the 2016 census, one of the things it told us was that there were a lot more people living in households, which should have told us that we had a housing problem we needed to deal with and plan for, if we did not know that already. It told us that we needed to plan for things like childcare provision and infrastructure, of which we are desperately short. We have not used the information the census provides us with to plan properly for the needs of our society, particularly in areas like the provision of housing, decent school infrastructure and childcare infrastructure.

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