Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 6, inclusive, together.

The Central Statistics Office's preparations for Census 2022 are at an advanced stage. Recruitment for the three layers of field managers is complete and those staff have commenced their employment. The Central Statistics Office, CSO, is currently in the process of recruiting over 5,000 enumerators and they are expected to begin their work with the delivery of the census forms to the public at the end of February. The delivery of the forms will be accompanied by a national publicity campaign to raise awareness of the census. Collection of the completed census forms will begin after census night on Sunday, 3 April 2022. It is expected that the collected forms will be returned to the CSO's Swords premises by June. All key IT systems for the census including the census processing system are either fully developed or are on track to be completed on time. The processing of the collected census forms is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2022.

The process to decide on the questions for the new census form began in October 2017, when the CSO launched a public consultation on the content for the next census. Suggestions for new census questions and changes to existing ones were invited as part of this consultation. Following the receipt of over 400 submissions, the CSO convened the Census Advisory Group, CAG, to assist in selecting questions to be tested for potential inclusion in the census. The CAG membership was drawn from Government Departments and agencies, community, interest and religious groups, academic and research organisations, the social partners and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. A pilot census was conducted in September 2018 to test both new questions and revisions to questions used in Census 2016 recommended by the CAG following an examination of the submissions. The CAG was reconvened in March 2019 to review the outcome of the pilot and to make recommendations to Government on the content for the census questionnaire. The recommendations were approved by Government in July 2019. Based on this process, the Census 2022 questionnaire will contain eight new questions. These questions are on the following topics: renewable energy sources, Internet access and devices, smoke alarms, smoking, working from home, volunteering, childcare and travelling home from work, school or college. There will be changes to a further 25 questions. These changes range from substantial to minor. Substantial changes were made to the following 11 questions: number of rooms, country of citizenship, ethnic group, religion, Irish language, disability, difficulties, carers, level of education, present principal status and employment status. The questions on fertility, field of study and dwelling type were dropped. However, data will be collected on dwelling type using a new digital enumerator application developed by the CSO, and data on field of study will be produced using administrative data sources.

The census form will also contain a time capsule section for the first time. This optional section of the form will enable householders to complete a message of their choosing. These messages will be stored securely with the census forms for 100 years, when they will be released to the public, in line with section 35 of the Statistics Act 1993.

Detailed information will also be collected on the housing stock by census enumerators. For the first time, this information will include a reason for vacancy for dwellings which are found to be vacant. Detailed information on each question on the Census 2022 form, including the changes made to questions retained from 2016, are available on the CSO website. The CSO expects to release preliminary population and housing results from Census 2022 by the end of June 2022, with the publication of the detailed official results to commence in the second quarter of 2023. The census dissemination strategy, which outlines the plans for post-census publications, is available on the CSO website. A more detailed publication schedule will be released later this year.

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