Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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74. To ask the Taoiseach the Irish exporting firm to active enterprises ratio in 2014, 2015 and 2016; and the corresponding EU average rate. [11554/17]

Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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88. To ask the Taoiseach if he will provide Ireland’s ratio of exporting firms to active enterprises in the EU. [11025/17]

Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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89. To ask the Taoiseach the total number of SMEs that account for total exports from Ireland, on a percentage basis, based on latest data at hand. [11024/17]

Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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91. To ask the Taoiseach the total number of Irish firms that account for total exports from Ireland, on a percentage basis, based on latest data at hand. [11040/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 74, 88, 89 and 91 together.

The exact data requested by the Deputy is not available but some estimates can be made for the industrial sector from the CSO’s Structural Business Statistics (SBS). The annual Census of Industrial Production, which is a component of SBS, is based on survey returns from a sample of about 2,000 industrial enterprises, combined with estimates for other enterprises based on Revenue data. The sample returns give an indication of whether the enterprise is involved in exporting goods.

In 2014, there were 16,497 active industrial enterprises in Ireland. Of these, 11,183 employed less than three persons. The following information relates to the responses to the survey from industrial enterprises which employed three or more persons.

From the sample returns for 2014, it is estimated that 54% of industrial enterprises with three or more persons employed exported some goods and exports accounted for about 65% of turnover. In the case of SMEs, 52% exported some goods and their exports accounted for 46% of turnover.

For large enterprises, employing 250 persons or more, 85% exported some goods and exports accounted for 71% of turnover. These are very broad estimates and a more detailed breakdown is not available from the SBS survey questions.

While corresponding figures for other EU Member States or further breakdowns of these CSO figures are not available, some breakdowns of trade by size of enterprise are available from the Trade by Enterprise Characteristic (TEC) statistics.

Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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75. To ask the Taoiseach the reason Ireland did not provide data for the incidence of exporting published by the OECD in 2016; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11555/17]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The data referred to in the OECD "Entrepreneurship at a Glance 2016 " publication is based on Trade by Enterprise Characteristics (TEC) data, which the Central Statistics Office supplies annually to Eurostat. The 2013 data was transmitted to Eurostat by the deadline in 2015, however at that time the data was marked confidential.

During 2015, the Central Statistics Office implemented major revisions to the trade data to take account of new methodology for the treatment of trade in aircraft. As this revised time series of data had not been published nationally, and was still being incorporated into Balance of Payments and National Accounts statistics, the TEC data submitted to Eurostat were temporarily marked as confidential. When the nationally published data were fully revised in early 2016, the confidentiality marks for the 2013 TEC tables were removed and resubmitted to Eurostat in March 2016.

As a result of this temporary confidentiality flagging of 2013 data, the "Entrepreneurship at a Glance 2016 " report includes 2012 data, but not 2013 data for Ireland. We expect that the OECD will update their website to take account of the 2013 data, and the CSO are currently liaising with Eurostat to clarify issues surrounding the 2014 data before publication on the Eurostat and OECD databases.