Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent)
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136. To ask the Taoiseach the current capacity utilisation in the manufacturing industry here; the reason Ireland is the only EU state not to have provided this information to EUROSTAT; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20608/14]

Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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The data referred to is the Current Level of Capacity Utilisation in the Manufacturing Industry, part of the DG ECFIN suite of Business and Consumer Surveys. The CSO are not the suppliers of this data and this type of qualitative data is not collected by the CSO.

This suite of Business and Consumer data provide information for economic surveillance and short term forecasting. Almost all of the questions are of a qualitative nature. In particular, the industry survey is largely qualitative and its main questions refer to an assessment of recent trends in production, of the current levels of order books and stocks, as well as expectations about production, selling prices and employment. In addition, the survey provides on a quarterly basis quantitative information on two variables that are not reported in conventional statistics, capacity utilisation and the number of months of production assured. The organisation supplying data for Ireland to DG ECFIN for the consumer section of this suite of surveys is GfK NOP. We have twice queried with DG ECFIN the source of the industry data supplied up to Q2/2012 but they have yet to confirm who are their suppliers of the data.