Finian McGrath (Dublin North Central, Independent)
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Question 89: To ask the Taoiseach the reason the phrase "current civil status" is not included in the current census particularly in relation to the Civil Partnership Bill. [7596/11]

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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As part of its preparation for Census 2011 the Central Statistics Office convened a broadly representative census advisory group to advise it on the questions to be included on the census form. A public consultation took place in 2008 and following this the advisory group decided on the questions to be tested in a census pilot survey which was carried out in April 2009. The survey covered over 10,000 households in 32 enumeration areas throughout the State.

In anticipation of same sex civil partnership being a legal marital status in 2011, a new variant of the marital status question (version B) was included in half of the questionnaires administered in the pilot survey. The purpose of this question was to test the impact on the accuracy and levels of response when a reference to same– sex civil partnership was included. In the remaining 50 percent of households the Census 2006 version of the question (version A) was asked.

The results of the pilot test showed that the level of non–response to the marital status question was 4.6 per cent in the case of version B compared with 2 per cent for version A. Furthermore, the percentage of single people was lower using version B than version A (37% compared with 40%). It is worth noting that version B – the same version used in the UK census – did not have the word 'single' in the any of the categories.

In deciding on which version of the marital status question to put forward for Government agreement two factors favoured the retention of the existing (2006) version. Firstly, at the time when the census forms were being finalised there was uncertainty about the timescale for the introduction of legislation covering same sex civil partnerships. Secondly, the results of the pilot indicated that the revised version of the question was not fully understood. For both these reasons the advisory group recommended that the 2006 question on marital status be retained for Census 2011 and the Government agreed with this recommendation.