Anonymised microdata files contain microdata that are provided for statistical/research purposes only in such a form that the information related to an identifiable entity/person cannot be directly (so, no direct identifiers) or indirectly (in many cases having undergone additional anonymisation procedures such as "top-coding" e.g. specific age re-coded to an age class) identified.
Currently, under the provisions of Section 34 of the Statistics Act, 1993, the CSO provides bona fide researchers with anonymised micro datasets relating to household surveys under formal contract arrangements through the Irish Social Science Data Archive (links to Irish Social Science Data Archive website).
The Irish Social Science Data Archive (ISSDA) hold, process and harmonise machine-readable data from surveys, census material, geographical databases, election results and so on, and make them readily available to users in the academic, public and commercial sectors.
The CSO datasets currently available through the archive consist of anonymised microdata from the quarterly Labour Force Survey (and its predecessors the Quarterly National Household and annual Labour Force Surveys), The EU Survey on Income and Living Conditions, the Household Budget Survey and sample data from the Census of Population.
These datasets are available for non-commercial research purposes only and users are required to sign a contract in advance covering the conditions under which they may use the data. The ISSDA (links to Irish Social Science Data Archive website) has its own website.