Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael)
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The CSO's Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) is currently the official source of estimates of Labour Market statistics in the State.

The rescheduling of the publication of the Q2 2017 QNHS results from August 22nd to September 22nd 2017 arose due to the phased implementation of a major redevelopment of the CSO's household surveys. The primary aim of the Household Survey Development (HSD) project is to expand the range of social statistics to meet new needs for information on households and persons. The implementation of the HSD will see the compilation of Labour Market statistics from a new Labour Force Survey (LFS) for Q3 2017. This survey will replace the existing QNHS and will see the introduction of Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI), a redesigned questionnaire and enhancements to the survey methodology.

In order to produce comparable Labour Market estimates it was necessary to conduct a full parallel run of the new LFS and the existing QNHS during the first two quarters of 2017 and this dual processing led to the delay in publishing data for the QNHS for Q2 2017. It is envisaged that the Q3 2017 estimates will be published by the end of January 2018 with Q4 2017 results following in February 2018. This will see the CSO's Labour Market estimates returning to existing timeliness targets.