Richard Bruton (Dublin North Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 191: To ask the Taoiseach the reason data are not available on the average earnings of persons employed in the health area of the public service who represent more than one third of public service employees; and the further reason sources of this important information have not been identified by the Central Statistics Office. [4286/06]

Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)
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The CSO's quarterly release on public sector employment and earnings includes information on numbers employed and weekly average earnings. The information on numbers employed relates to all sectors within the public service, while the statistics on average weekly earnings are available for all sectors except health. Owing to the lack of suitably-structured and comparable earnings data across the health sector, only employment data was included for this sector.

The CSO is phasing in a new survey, the earnings, hours and employment costs survey, which will replace all of the existing short-term earnings surveys. Initially, the industrial and financial sectors are being surveyed. When fully operational, the new survey will cover most of the public and private sectors, including the health sector.

The survey will provide more detailed information on earnings and labour costs than is available from existing data. It will also make it easier to compare earnings between sectors and categories of workers by providing a measure of earnings per hour as distinct from earnings per week. The CSO has already begun discussions with the Health Service Executive with a view to arranging the compilation of the quarterly earnings data needed for this new survey.