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› Minutes of Meeting 2 - 24th May 2011
Attendance:
Richard McMahon - (chair) Central Statistics Office(CSO)
Joe Madden - (secretary) CSO
Steve MacFeely - CSO
Stefanie Haller - Economic & Social Research Institute
Geraldine Anderson - Irish Business & Employers Confederation(IBEC)
Tom McGovern - Companies Registartion Office (CRO)
Deborah Quinn - Forfas
Gerard Monks - Dept. Enterprise, Trade & Innovation
Adrian O'Donoghue - BMW Regional Assembly
Sean Murphy - Chambers Ireland
Catalina Gonzalez - CSO
Kieran Walsh - CSO
Joseph Keating - CSO
John Dunne - CSO
Apologies:
Jim Curran - Irish Small & Medium Sized Enterprises Association (ISME)
Jonathan Healy - Forfas
Alma Murnane - Chambers Ireland
The minutes are given in the order of the agreed agenda.
Introduction
In his opening comments the chairman reminded members of the main aim of the Enterprise Statistics Group (ESG) group which was to provide a formal consultation forum for producers, providers and users of official enterprise statistics emphasising that the CSO hoped that the group would play an important role in assessing the needs and priorities of key national users of Business and Enterprise statistics. He referred to the expanding membership of the group with new interest in participation expressed by Revenue (their research unit) and by the Dept of Finance and he welcomed the representative from the CRO to the meeting.
Minutes of meeting on 07-10-2010
These were agreed without amendment.
Outline by CSO on Access to Finance (ATF) survey
Catalina Gonzalez of the CSO gave a presentation on the recently conducted ATF survey by the CSO and gave an outline of the main features and results. She indicated that the survey was established to meet Eurostat requirements as part of an EU wide harmonised data collection on access to finance issues and provided valuable national insights into the availability of finance in Ireland in the years 2007 and 2010. She indicated that the timely survey results were very much welcomed by users.
Outline by CSO on ‘Job Churn’ statistics
John Dunne of CSO gave a detailed presentation on ‘Job Churn’ statistics which were primarily concerned with ‘the Dynamics in Business Employment ’ . He outlined the background to the analyses presented which was the “Job Churn Explorer” published in the Administrative Data Centre on the CSO website in April on an experimental basis. This tool had enabled dynamic analyses to be made on the flow of jobs and persons between firms and within and between sectors and importantly, the database product had been derived solely from administrative data sources in other Government Departments (mainly using P35 administrative data obtained from the Revenue Commissioners). It was suggested that future work could include regional analyses and also flow analyses of the movements of persons between employment and unemployment.
Outline by CSO on Quarterly Earnings Statistics (EHECS)
Kieran Walsh CSO gave a presentation of results from analyses of earnings statistics from the Earnings, Hours and Employment Costs Survey (EHECS). In his introduction, he gave an historical overview of the development of short term earnings statistics in the CSO with particular emphasis on developments during the last 18 months. He indicated that EHECS which began in Q4 2005 with limited sectoral coverage was expanded by Q1 2008 to cover most sectors (Industry, Construction, Trade, Business Services and the Public sector). This expansion in coverage facilitated the scrapping of existing surveys in these areas and resulted in a reduction in the burden of form filling on firms. Further reductions in this burden were facilitated by a detailed review of EHECS in 2010 which resulted in the simplification of questionnaires and changes in coverage. These changes were made without significantly impacting on the quality and range of statistics produced.
In his presentation on earnings statistics, Kieran outlined results from the detailed analyses carried out by the CSO using results from EHECS and other CSO sources. He indicated that the results from these analyses could be accessed on the CSO web site in the publication ‘Analysis of wage bill change in enterprises and components of change, quarter 3 2008 to quarter 3 2009’. The meeting welcomed the analyses and suggested that the exercise be repeated in the future. See: http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/releasespublications/documents/earnings/2009/wagebillq30809.pdf
Presentation by Joe Keating CSO on web based data capture
This interactive presentation gave a real live view on completing a CSO form online and emphasised the security and confidentiality guarantees provided by the system. The current system increases the range of EDI options provided by CSO to data providers and potential users are provided with login and password details by CSO.
Outline by ESRI on priority focus areas.
Dr Stefanie Haller outlined some ESRI views on possible priority focus areas for the ESG group and these areas included the following:-
· Statistics on Finance to include:- the Financial Services sectors, cooperation with Central Bank (CB), corporate finance and debt/equity issues, repeat ATF survey
· Statistics on employment, education/skills, workplace practices, hours worked for PT, FT, worked abroad details in NES
· Inward and outward direct investment trade, shares of foreign ownerhip and origin of ownership, regular coverage of outward FDI, Intra firm trade with foreign affiliates
· Size of business premises (m2) in ASI
· Public and private grants to firms
· R&D expendidtures and R&D personnel from all firms
Views expressed at the meeting by CSO (1) indicated that other areas of interest included:-
· Greater use of Trade and Balance of Payments (BOP) data
· Further exploitation of synergies across CSO datasets
· Further reduce burden on firms and assess burden arising from non CSO surveys and data collections
· Research new ways of processing administrative data
· Continue lobbying for the Unique Business Identifier (UBI) and in the meantime ensure that CSO datasets can be efficiently linked
· Making use of (x,y) postcodes and geocode firms
· Aim to produce more results at NUTS 3 level
Other views expressed at the meeting indicated that other areas of interest included:-
· Research into the Black Economy
· Statistics on Entrepreneurship and Demography
· More extensive Trade statistics – track goods to final destination
· Analysis of economic interactions and relationships with other countries
Steve MacFeely gave an outline of some CSO proposals for prioritisation (1) but stressed that we were facing a period of austerity and cut backs and that prioritisation would be inevitable and would likely extend to include actions governed by EU Regulations. On the issue of data matching, he stressed that the assistance of other government Departments would be very much welcomed in the quest to introduce the Unique Business Identifier (UBI). He indicated that about 80% of EU member states now use UBIs and that these were introduced to improve administrative efficiencies.
The meeting acknowledged that the discussions towards the end of the meeting were most interesting and informative. This suggests that less time be allocated to presentations in the future.
Date for next meeting:- It was hoped that the next meeting would take place in the Autumn.