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Attendees CSO: Keith McSweeney (Chairperson), Susana Portillo, Dr Mary Smyth, Gerard Doolan and Kevin Phelan (Secretary)
Attendees (CSO users): Neil Cooney (Enterprise Ireland), Pamela Malone (Department of Finance), Helena Connellan (DJEI), Patrick Rochford (DJEI), Adrian O’Donoghue (Northern and Western Regional Assembly), Jennifer Kenneally (ISME), Sarah Foley (Chambers Ireland), Breda O'Sullivan (IDA), Stefanie Haller (UCD), Fergal McCann (Central Bank), Geraldine Anderson (IBEC)
Keith McSweeney opened the meeting and welcomed all attendees to the 6th meeting of the ESLG. He then proceeded to outline the agenda for the meeting. There would be three presentations from CSO in total. Two of the presentations related to data needs that were presented at the previous meeting namely Access to Finance and Balance Sheet data. These presentations are CSO’s response to the needs identified. The third presentation focused on the use of administrative data in respect of the Structure of Earnings survey.
As there were a number of attendees who were new to the group, the chairperson asked all members to introduce themselves.
The minutes of the previous meeting in February 2014 had been agreed previously over e-mail and subsequently published on CSO’s website.
At the 2014 meeting, a clear need for a repeat of the 2010 Access to Finance (ATF) survey was identified by members of the group. It was decided at that time to set up a working group to examine the feasibility of repeating the survey.
The Access to Finance working group was set up in February/March 2014 and included a number of representatives from the Central Bank, Department of Finance, DJEI, IBEC, EI, ISME and CSO.
Following on from the initial meetings, a proposal was made to the Senior Management Committee (SMC) of CSO seeking approval for this survey. The SMC gave approval for the project with the proviso that all work be carried out using existing resources.
The work on the new version of the ATF questionnaire started back in March 2014 with a final version of the questionnaire agreed in November 2014. As the questionnaires will be issued in 2015 it was decided that the reference year will be calendar year 2014.
The survey will be a voluntary survey with approximately 7,000 enterprises being surveyed. In comparison, the 2010 survey covered 3,000 enterprises employing 10 or more. The key difference between the two surveys is the inclusion in the 2015 survey of micro enterprises which represent 90.7% of all enterprises. In order to reduce response burden, the survey will be conducted online only.
The questionnaire will be split into six topics which include an introduction which will determine if the business is in scope. There are a number of questions related to seeking finance. There will also be questions regarding the period 2015-2017 and some general questions related to burden.
It is expected that enterprises will be contacted in March with data collection ceasing at the end of July. There will be a number of reminders issued during this period. It is planned that analysis of the returns will be complete by October with publication scheduled for November.
The response rate for the previous ATF survey was 30%, it is hoped that with the co-operation of the employer bodies and other semi-state agencies that the response rate for this survey will be higher.
Comments:
There was broad welcome for the re-introduction of the survey from members of the group. There was a comment concerning the frequency of this survey. CSO stated at this point that no decision had been made but that a decision will be made post publication of the results.
Once data is published in November 2015, RMF access could be granted to the dataset. There would be a possibility of linking to other CSO data sources such as the Annual Services Inquiry, pending approval by the Director General.
The background to this project was that at the 2014 meeting, a data gap was identified in that information on firm financing is not included on CSO surveys. It was stated that this represented a huge gap in Irish policy makers’ understanding of the enterprise landscape. However the majority of data that is required is already captured on balance sheets. In principle it should not be difficult for the structural surveys to collect this data without impacting on the response burden of enterprises. The type of information that was required included debt liabilities, cash flows and fixed assets.
Following on from this meeting, a proposal was made to include these questions on the 2014 Census of Industrial Production and Annual Services Inquiry. These surveys provide valuable information on the performance and characteristics of Irish enterprises annually.
The surveys are particularly rich in information on employment, exports, imports, production, inputs, turnover and investment. However the surveys do not provide information on balance sheet data.
This proposal was accepted by CSO with respect to reference year 2014 but under a number of conditions.
Firstly, the data would be collected from those enterprises who returned electronically. For space reasons, it would not be possible to amend the paper questionnaires. Secondly, CSO staff would not query the data that was returned. This was because there was no data to benchmark against.
It was planned that data will be made available to researchers under the Officer of Statistics programme by June 2016 following national publication.
Comments:
CSO commented that this data collection was a pilot and a decision to continue with these questions would be made after the data collection for 2014 was complete. At this point, it is unknown what impact (if any) the addition of these questions would have on the response rates.
Similar to the presentation on ATF, members of the group welcomed this development and looked forward to the data being made available.
There was some comment on whether or not administrative data such as CRO data could be used to meet this data need but it was the view of CSO that it was not possible at this juncture.
In September 2013, the Short Term Statistics Division commenced a Structure of Earnings (SES) – Administrative Data Project (SESADP). Ireland is required to provide data on earnings in order to meet the requirements of the 2014 SES. It was decided to fulfil this requirement by using administrative data.
The project was broken down into five different modules as follows:
In terms of the data sources, the project team identified a number of sources, both internal and external to CSO. By using identifiers common to the various sources CSO were able to link the sources to create a master dataset. On completion of the second module, this dataset contained all employees in the State with their gross annual/weekly earnings classified by activity, gender, public/private sector etc.
The information in this dataset contains the information necessary to satisfy EU requirement for a Structure of Earnings survey. The first set of SES statistics for 2011 and 2012 were submitted to Eurostat in November 2013. Finalised datasets with more detail will be available during the first half of 2015. Following on from these releases, there will be a National Employment survey publication.
In terms of response burden, the National Employment survey was the 3rd larger survey that CSO conducted in terms of response burden. By using these data sources, the response burden has been reduced to zero for this survey. In addition, there is significant cost savings to CSO in terms of the number of staff that would be required to process the survey.
Comments:
The general consensus was that this was an excellent project and a query was raised about being able to carry out a similar exercise in respect of Form 11 data or Corporation Tax data.
CSO stated that administrative data was being used extensively in respect of the CIP and ASI surveys and that where possible administrative data would be used. This would reduce the response burden on businesses but it was important to note the primary purpose of administrative data is not for statistical purposes.
At this point the chair opened the floor to members and requested comments from the group on what data gaps there were or any issues that members wanted to raise. Issues that were raised were as follows:
RMFs
CSO were asked about the possibility of the introduction of remote access to RMFs. CSO said that as part of the CSO’s 2020 strategy, there was a firm commitment to introduce this service. At this point, it was not possible to state when the service would be made available. However any solution would also need to take account of Field staff such as QNHS interviewers who worked remotely.
Unique Business Identifier (UBI)
CSO were asked if there was any progress on the introduction of a UBI. CSO replied that it was on the government agenda as part of data sharing but no progress had been reported.
Printing down of e-releases
A comment was made that the e-releases that CSO produced were difficult to read when printed. CSO undertook to provide feedback to the CSO’s dissemination division on the matter.
Regional breakdowns
There was some discussion on the issue of regional breakdowns and in particular when the new NUTS regions were due to come into force. This change will have an impact on both State Aid and Structural Funds. CSO undertook to follow up the matter.
Business in Ireland 2013:
A query was raised regarding the next publication of the Business in Ireland report. CSO stated that the main structural surveys which provide most of the data for the publication were due to be published by Q3 2015. Business in Ireland would be published after that, most likely during Q4 of 2015.
Other comments made by members included a request for more tables on the CSO’s website but CSO advised members that some of the tables that are published are only receiving 1 or 2 hits per week. Consideration is been given to not publishing tables where the hit rate is low. However these tables would be available upon request.
Meeting close:
The chair thanked members for their contributions and closed the meeting.