CSO Prosecution Policy

The Law

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) is required by Irish law, the Statistics Act, 1993, to compile statistics for the benefit of the state and society. The law imposes legal obligations on citizens and companies to supply information to the CSO. Specifically, Section 25 of the Statistics Act, 1993 permits the Taoiseach to make Orders requiring the provision of information to the CSO and Section 26 allows the CSO to issue a direction to a person to provide it with information. Failure or refusal to provide the required information to the CSO is a criminal offence under Part VI of the Statistics Act, 1993 and such an offence can be prosecuted by the CSO.

Engagement

The CSO’s first priority is to encourage compliance through education, engagement and persuasion, and we will only bring a criminal prosecution as a last resort. We are very conscious of the burden which CSO surveys can place on respondents and we actively work to minimise that burden. We engage with the public, with industry and sectoral bodies and with individual persons and companies to encourage responses to surveys and censuses. Our policy is to initially issue reminder notices to non-respondents and to follow up with a warning notice, underlining the legal obligations and advising that a refusal to respond could result in a criminal prosecution.

Prosecution

At all times, we prefer to work with citizens and companies and we will only pursue a court prosecution as a last resort. If however, despite warning, a person/company fails to respond to a survey or census, we reserve the right to pursue a court prosecution.

In deciding whether or not to commence a prosecution, we will consider the available evidence and whether the prosecution is in the public interest. Generally, the public interest will be in favour of prosecution. The following are examples of the type of issues which we will consider when assessing the public interest:

• The nature and severity of the offence;
• The impact of the non-compliance on the CSO’s work;
• The need to maintain confidence in the quality and accuracy of CSO statistics;
• The need for deterrence generally and in relation to a specific defendant;
• Respect for the respondents who take the time and effort to respond and comply; and
• Whether there are any aggravating or mitigating factors.

Our Values

Our values are set out in our corporate strategy “Independent Insight for All - CSO 2030” https://www.cso.ie/en/aboutus/lgdp/corporatepublications/ and include Independence, Trustworthiness and Confidentiality. As a statutory body, we are obliged to carry out our legal mandate and in exercising our prosecution powers, we will do so forcefully and with resolve. We will also act with objectivity, impartiality, transparency and integrity.

Contact

Any correspondence or queries regarding this Prosecution Policy and its implementation can be directed to the Legal and Enforcement Section, Central Statistics Office, Skehard Road, Cork T12 X00E or email legal@cso.ie