Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)
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181. To ask the Taoiseach his plans to address the fact that data in relation to many marginalised groups such as Travellers and Roma, migrants, disabled people, and homeless people is not included in the annual CSO Survey on Income and Living Conditions; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34533/25]

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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The Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) is the official source of household income, poverty and deprivation statistics for Ireland. conducted annually by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) as part of a European-wide data collection governed by Regulation (EU) No. 2019/1700, also known as the Integrated European Social Statistics (IESS) framework. This regulation standardises social statistics across EU member states to ensure comparability of data on income, poverty, social exclusion, and living conditions.

Under this regulation, SILC is restricted to private households, meaning individuals must reside in conventional dwellings to be included in the survey sample. This definition excludes people living in collective or institutional settings, such as:

·Emergency or long-term homeless accommodation

·Direct provision centres

·Nursing homes, hospitals, or prisons

·Traveller halting sites not classed as private households

This methodological limitation means that small groups of the population, including Travellers and Roma, migrants in communal accommodation, people with disabilities in institutional care, and homeless individuals, are often underrepresented in the SILC achieved sample or entirely excluded from the SILC sample frame. As a result, national statistics on income poverty, material deprivation, and social exclusion may not fully capture the circumstances of these population groups.

The CSO are aware of this limitation in SILC and pursue a range of approaches to address data gaps relating to small populations groups.

·The Census of Population is undertaken every five years and is integral for providing detailed statistics on small population groups in Ireland.

·Enhanced sampling methodologies and collection techniques are utilised to improve the representation of small population groups in achieved samples and outputs of surveys (e.g. Growing Up in Ireland survey).

· CSO are expanding their use of administrative data to provide greater insights on small population groups in Ireland. For example, the Geographical Profiles of Income in Ireland, links Census data with administrative income records which supports a more detailed understanding of income distribution across small geographic areas.