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11 November 2009

The theme of this seminar will be transport. Transport is not only an important economic sector but also a sector of major social and environmental importance. As concerns over cross-cutting issues such as health, sustainable travel and energy consumption have emerged, so have the demands for data.

CSO is continually striving to remain relevant to data users by compiling data on emerging developments and trends.

The seminar provides an ideal opportunity to hear about some of the new data holdings and reports being developed by CSO and learn about some ongoing research that is making use of CSO data.

The seminar also offers a great chance to meet many of the CSO transport statisticians, who will be happy to answer any questions you might have or discuss what data are available to best suit your needs.

The seminar will be of interest to:
- Firms and their representative organisations
- Government officials
- Academics and students
- Anyone interested in understanding transport, energy or the environment in Ireland

Seminar Programme is now available.

Venue: Dublin Castle, Erin Room, Dublin 2

Time: 13.30

Date: November 11, 2009

To Register: Email: corporate.support@cso.ie

or

Contact: Sabrina Bowen @ 021-453 5495 

Presentations

2nd Business Statistics Seminar

Dublin, 11 November, 2009

Erin Room, Dublin Castle

Summary of Proceedings

The 2nd Business Statistics Seminar was hosted by CSO on November 11, 2009 in the Erin Room in Dublin Castle. In contrast to the first seminar which dealt with a variety of issues, including family business, productivity, international sourcing and business costs, this seminar focused exclusively on transport statistics.

The seminar series affords an excellent opportunity to communicate with data users and providers and highlight some of the work has done to reduce respondent burden and provide new data series. It also provides an ideal forum for statisticians and data users and suppliers to meet and discuss issues of interest, such as data quality, scope, methodology and of course new or emerging data needs. The seminar typically comprises of both CSO speakers, illustrating how new datasets can be created by linking administrative data sources or outlining key results from CSO data and guest speakers or researchers who use CSO data and demonstrate how those data to great effect.

Transport was selected as the theme for the second seminar because it is at the heart of modern day living. It is central to our economy, our society, our health and increasingly, our environment. Freight and shipping transport move exports around the globe and import intermediate and final goods for further production and consumption. Everyday millions of people commute to and from work and school, either in their own cars or on public transport. Modern international travel facilitates people to jet around the world for holiday, family or business purposes. For policy makers the challenge of matching this demand with sustainable travel and transport is a real one. For this reason CSO is putting increasing emphasis on developing our suite of transport statistics.

The seminar programme dealt with aviation, road freight, vehicle kilometres, car licensing and maritime transport. All of the data used in the CSO talks were based primarily on administrative data sources. The seminar programme was:

  • Opening remarks - Richard McMahon, CSO
  • Using administrative data to estimate vehicle-kilometres for the national vehicle fleet - Ken Moore, CSO
  • Freight Transport on the Island of Ireland - Dr. Eoin Maginnis, InterTrade Ireland
  • Linking data to calculate air passenger-kilometres and emissions - Sheona Gilsenan, CSO
  • Moving the Irish Economy around the Globe: An overview of Irish Shipping and Port Statistics - Glenn Murphy, Irish Maritime Development Office
  • Developments in vehicle licensing & registration statistics - Gregg Patrick, CSO
  • The New Eurostat Vision - Nico Hilbert, Eurostat

Unfortunately, on the day Mr. Eoin Maginnis couldn't attend owing to a family illness and Mr. Steve MacFeely, CSO gave an abridged version of his paper, in particular highlighting the origin-destination and cross-border applications of the Road Freight Survey data. Otherwise the seminar went to plan. The third edition of the Transport Omnibus was launched at the seminar, including the new data on vehicle kilometres. 105 people attended the seminar (including speakers and CSO staff), representing a range of data users/suppliers from government departments and agencies, private industry, media, academia and international colleagues (from Northern Ireland, the UK, Croatia, Romania and Eurostat).

Transport Seminar - Guest Type

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The mix of CSO and guest speakers made for an interesting and varied afternoon interspersed with active and lively discussion and debate. Over half of the guests completed feedback questionnaires and overall feedback was very positive with all respondents reporting they found the seminar useful and encouraging CSO to continue the seminar series. The most common topics requested for future seminars were: Energy & environment, People & Society, Regional issues, Tourism & Travel and Globalisation.