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Survey Name

Household Budget Survey 2020

Survey purpose and legal basis

The Household Budget Survey 2020 is a voluntary household survey carried out by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) under Section 24 of the Statistics Act, 1993.  It is part of an EU-wide programme.   

The Household Budget Survey (HBS) 2020 questionnaire combines two household surveys to gather information on household and individual income, expenditure and living conditions in Ireland.  It provides a number of key national poverty indicators, that will help monitor progress in the fight against poverty. Information collected on expenditure patterns will be used to update the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the official measure of inflation. 

This survey will collect information for:

  • Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) which is held yearly to comply with the requirement of Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003 concerning Community statistics on income and living conditions.
  • Household Budget Survey (HBS) which is held every 5 years to fulfil a National requirement to update the weighting basis of the Consumer Price Index (CPI)

 The personal data is lawfully processed under Articles 6(1)(e), and 9(2)(j) of the General Data Protection Regulation and Section 38(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. 

Who uses the results?

Our results are only ever made available to the public in aggregate form and we make sure that it is impossible for individuals to be identified. Anonymised survey information may be provided to other government departments, approved organisations and approved researchers for statistical purposes only e.g. Eurostat

Is your personal data confidential and how long will the data be retained?

Yes. All information supplied to the CSO is treated as strictly confidential. The Statistics Act, 1993 sets stringent confidentiality standards: information collected may be used only for statistical purposes, and no details that might be related to an identifiable person or household may be divulged to any other government department or body.

We will retain the survey data indefinitely as one of the primary purposes of the data collection is to obtain longitudinal information on income and expenditure.

The sources and categories of your personal data, where the data has not been collected directly from you:

For the Household Budget Survey, CSO uses administrative data in its statistical programs to complement or replace survey data, to make its statistical operations more efficient or to create new insights or products. These data enable CSO to fill information needs about the Irish society, economy and environment, reduce response burden and costs imposed by surveys, and improve data quality and timeliness. All data obtained by CSO are used solely for statistical purposes.

 

Administrative Data Sources:

1. Department of Social Protection: DSP Payments-Long and Short Term Social Welfare Payments Data
2. Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Basic Farm Payments
3. Revenue: Income tax Form 11 and PMOD (PAYE Modernisation)
4. Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI): Grant Application and Payment Data
5. Local Authority HAP Shared Services Centre: Housing Assistance Payments
6. Central Credit Register: Mortgage, Loans, Credit Card and PCP Data

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For further information on this survey, your Data Protection rights and how your data is used please contact:

Andrew Powell, Household Data Collection, Central Statistics Office, Skehard Road, Cork, T12 X00E


Tel: (+353) 21 453 5341 E-mail: andrew.powell@cso.ie

Data Protection Information:

Under the General Data Protection Regulation, you have the following rights:

  • The right to lodge a complaint with the Data Protection Commission. Contact details: Office of the Data Protection Commission, 21 Fitzwilliam Square South, Dublin 2, D02 RD28, Ireland.
  • The right to request access, rectification, erasure, restriction or to object to the processing of your personal data.

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.

Central Statistics Office Data Protection Officer Contact Details: