Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein)
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140. To ask the Taoiseach the number of workers employed in the financial services sector; the number directly employed in retail banking and aircraft leasing for each year since 2005, [35951/13]

Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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The information requested by the Deputy is available from 2006-2011. Data for 2012 is not yet available as it is dependent on the receipt of administrative data which are not filed until 2013 and are not fully available to CSO until 2014. The latest CSO Business Demography returns for 2011 were released on 25 July 2013. The primary purpose of Business Demography is to provide estimates of numbers of enterprises and numbers of persons engaged. The data for Business Demography is based on the CSO Central Business Register. The Business Register is a register of all enterprises that are active in the State. There is no lower size limit, but for practical reasons, Business Demography data is based on enterprises that are registered with the Revenue Commissioners. The first reference year covered is 2006.

Table 1 below contains the number of Persons Engaged in NACE Rev 2 sector 64 (less 64.20, Activities of Holding Companies) “Financial service activities excluding activities of holding companies” (including retail banking), and sector 77.35 “Renting and leasing of air transport equipment.”

Persons Engaged includes employees, proprietors and family members. The number of employees is calculated on an annualized equivalent basis for the reference year. The total number of weeks worked by an employee over the course of the year is divided by 52 to get the fraction of their full annual employment. So for example, a person who has worked for 52 weeks in the year will contribute 1 to the employment figures, while a person who has worked 26 weeks of the year will contribute 0.5. No distinction is made between full time and part time employment, so an employee who works on a part time basis for a full year is still counted as 1 employee.

Table1: Number of Persons Engaged in Ireland in selected activities by Sector, 2006-2011

Business Demography figures are based purely on administrative data. This results in some differences with survey based Structural Business Statistics (SBS) releases, like the Census of Industrial Production, Building and Construction Inquiry, and Annual Services Inquiry.

1) Administrative data sources allow better coverage of small enterprises, which do not show up using survey methods.

2) Administrative data counts active Revenue registrations as active enterprises. This generally lines up with the definition of an enterprise in survey areas, but there can be some differences, especially in enterprise groups.

3) Business Demography counts employment data based on P35 employer returns, while other SBS releases measure employment based on survey returns. This is particularly significant for enterprise groups, where the whole group may make one P35 return, which results in all its employees being counted against the overall enterprise group NACE code. Survey based releases may divide this employment across different enterprises, and therefore different NACE codes.

Further information is available from recent CSO Business Statistics releases.

The Business Demography Press Release of 25 July 2013 is available at;

http://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/bd/businessdemography2011/

The Business in Ireland Release of November 2012 is available at;

http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/releasespublications/documents/multisectoral/2010/businessinireland2010.pdf