Census 2027 Communal Establishment Pilot
The CSO is Ireland's National Statistical Institute. We impartially collect, analyse, and make available statistics about Ireland’s people, society, and economy.
Every five years, we run the Census; a count, and account, of every person and dwelling in Ireland on a specific night. Afterwards, we analyse people’s returns, publish reports, and get ready for the next Census.
Part of our preparation will look at how we interact with communal establishments (CEs), e.g. barracks, student accommodation, and prisons. In Quarter 4 of 2025, we’ll test our ‘Listing Form’ and ‘Secure Deposit Box’ tools by capturing CE residents’ details.
The Statistics Act, 1993 gives us authority to request people and businesses’ voluntary provision of information. On this basis, we’ll ask a number of CEs to help us with our testing. They won’t be required to take part, but their participation will help us get ready for Census 2027 and will be very much appreciated.
Collected data will be received and used only by the CSO’s Census Logistics section, which will examine returns to confirm that the Listing Form and Secure Deposit Box meet our requirements.
The data we’ll collect is strictly confidential and won’t be shared. This is underpinned by the Statistics Act, 1993. We’ll keep the data for three months, then it’ll be deleted.
We’ll never share the data we collect.
You have the right to: be informed, which is why we've published this information; access; rectification; erasure; restriction of processing; and to object.
We facilitate these rights to the greatest extent possible, though some of them can only be exercised in specific circumstances and case-specific restrictions may apply.
The data we’ll collect: respondent address; respondent eircode; respondent email; respondent name; respondent phone; respondent signature; resident address; resident citizenship; resident date of birth; resident eircode; resident first name; resident sex; and resident surname.
We’ll ask the following accommodation providers to participate in our pilot: Aparto; Bartra Group; the Defence Forces; Dublin City University; Esker Lodge; Evergreen Group; the Health Service Executive; the Irish Prison Service; Killure Bridge Nursing Home; M&C Properties; Maynooth University; St Attracta's Residence; University of Limerick; and YUGO.
If you’d like to know more about the CE Pilot, contact: Marie Martinez, Assistant Principal, Census Logistics CSO, Swords Business Campus, Balheary Road, Swords, Co. Dublin, K67 D2X4
Under the General Data Protection Regulation, you have the following rights:
However, because your data is processed for statistical purposes these rights may be limited in accordance with Article 89 of the GDPR. This is due to the fact that the exercise of any of these rights may render impossible, or seriously impair, the achievement of the statistical processing and such restriction maybe necessary for the fulfillment of those purposes.
If you’d like to discuss data protection, contact our Data Protection Officer: dpo@cso.ie, CSO, Skehard Road, Cork, T12 X00E.
If you have a data protection complaint, you can submit it to the Data Protection Commission via their online portal: https://dataprotection.ie/en/contact/how-contact-us, or by writing a letter to: Data Protection Commission, 6 Pembroke Row, Dublin 2, D02 X963.