Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

As Chief Whip, I am taking this question on behalf of the Taoiseach. I thank the Deputy for the question. The standard classification of industrial activity used by the CSO in Ireland is NACE. This is the statistical classification used, since 1970, for a wide variety of European statistics in the economic, social, environmental, and agricultural domains. Since the last version, NACE Revision 2, was published in 2006, Europe’s economy has evolved significantly, leading to a need to update this classification to reflect changes in business practices and society developments.

For the past few years, Eurostat has worked with its partners in the European statistical system on this update. This revision process has now been completed and the new version, NACE revision 2.1, which was established in 2022, will be used for the production of European statistics from 2025 onwards. NACE revision 2.1 entails several changes, including the introduction of new concepts at all levels of the classification and the restructuring of a number of the existing headings. At the same time, major efforts have been made to maintain the structure of the classifications in all areas that do not explicitly require change based on new concepts. Following this revision process, there is no new NACE classification to uniquely identify dog breeding in Ireland. This industry sector is classified under NACE code 01.48, which relates to the raising of other animals. I can expand on that aspect in my next reply.

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