Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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17. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation her views on the discrepancies between the jobs related information disclosed by the 2016 census and information gathered and published by her Department; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [30244/17]

Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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The Action Plan for Jobs is one of the Government’s key instruments to support job creation. Since the first Plan was launched in early 2012, over 225,000 more people are at work.

My Department does not gather data but uses the official data published by the CSO. I assume the Deputy is referring to the CSO's Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS), the official source of employment data in the State. My Department uses the QNHS data, which is also used by Eurostat, to monitor performance against our employment targets. The most recent figures available are for Q1 2017.

Census 2016 was taken on the 24th April 2016 and measures employment at a moment in time only.

According to Census 2016, there were 2,006,641 people at work in April 2016. The CSO’s most recent QNHS data release shows that almost 70,000 new jobs were created in the year to Q1 2017, bringing total employment in the State to 2,063,900.

The CSO highlights the differences in methodology between the QNHS, the official source of employment data in the State, and Census 2016. The main differences are that there is a greater degree of precision on the employment status of individuals in the QNHS, than in the Census form. The Census uses a broad definition of whether unemployed or not, while the QNHS asks if the person, in the week before the survey was without work and available for work within the next two weeks, and had taken specific steps in the preceding four weeks, to find work.  In addition, the Census form is completed by the head of household while the QNHS is by face to face interview and the census is a complete enumeration while the QNHS is a sample survey.

My priority is to work closely with Ministerial colleagues to keep us on track to achieve our goal to have an additional 200,000 people at work by 2020, with 135,000 outside Dublin.