The public sector in Ireland is composed of general government and all corporations (financial or non-financial) which are under public control.

The general government sector (S13) in Ireland is made up of central (S1311) and local (S1313) government sectors. It is the set of all bodies which:

1. are directly or indirectly controlled by a government department or office, or by a local authority;

and which either,

2. lack autonomy of decision and the power to own assets/liabilities, and/or do not produce a full set of accounts (the ‘institutional unit’ test); or

3. are non-market producers (the ‘market/non-market’ test).

A corporation in the non-financial (S11) or financial (S12) sectors is defined as public when it is controlled by government, otherwise it is private. The diagram below illustrates how the public sector includes general government along with public corporations in the non-financial or financial sectors.

The next couple of chapters outline central and local government sectors and the Background notes outline the criteria and the statistical classification decision making process.