Rónán Mullen (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. The census has now taken place and has hopefully reached the stage where the last few forms are trickling back to the Central Statistics Office, CSO, either via the census enumerators or by post. It is important that we get some clarity on an issue that arose before the census took place. Senator Malcolm Byrne raised this matter at one point and I have also raised it a few times in the House. In March, the CSO issued some rather strange guidance regarding the question on the census form that asked a person's sex and whether they were male or female. On its website, the CSO advised people as follows:

If you are uncomfortable ticking one of these options you may signal this by marking both boxes. However, for statistical analysis purposes all entries will be assigned a sex ... at random.

This advice was truly bizarre. Regardless of what one thinks of the debate about the easily labelled but not so easily defined issue of transgender rights, this issue raises two significant problems. First, to assign sex at random is ridiculous since it will skew the result of the census to some degree. While mathematically, with a 50:50 chance of the correct sex being randomly assigned the difference might be very small, the whole idea of the census is that it should be as accurate as humanly possible. That aspiration is predicated on the legal requirement for people to give accurate information. That CSO advice seemed to deliberately incorporate, envisage and encourage inaccuracy in the results.

Second, and far more serious, is the issue I just mentioned.The advice from the CSO to mark both the male and female boxes appears to induce or encourage people to fill out the census form in a way that commits a breach of the law. The census form itself references section 43 of the Statistics Act 1993, which states that any person who knowingly provides false information "may be subject to a fine of up to €44,440.". There are no ifs, buts or maybes about that. It is a serious breach carrying a serious fine, to knowingly provide false information and anybody, as I have said, who knowingly provides false information is subject to such a fine. There is no exemption in the Act for anybody who is "uncomfortable" about answering truthfully and yet anyone who followed the guidance on the CSO website would be clearly breaching the law. It is not possible to be both male and female at the same time. To say that one is both male and female is completely false. It is clear breach of the Statistics Act and in this case, a breach encouraged by the CSO.

A statutory agency appearing to condone a breach of the law governing its own statutory functions is a serious matter and I ask the Minister of State to address a number of issues arising from this. First, how does the guidance from the CSO possibly accord, in the Government's view, with the provisions of the Statistics Act of 1993? Does it not fly in the face of section 43 of that Act? Second, why was the CSO encouraging people to break the law by giving false information in a census form? Third, was the Taoiseach consulted before such advice was issued? Fourth, are there any other sections of the census form which people could disregard if they are "uncomfortable" with answering accurately or does the exemption only apply to people who consider themselves to be transgender and if so, what is the logic underpinning that?

Those are my issues and I hope I have stayed within the allotted time. I think I have, by 23 seconds. I have set a record for myself. I try not to do that too often.