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Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS)
The Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) 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, under the auspices of the ECB, to collect household-level data on household’s finances and consumption. The survey has been carried out in 2013, 2018 and 2020.
The Household Finance and Consumption Survey gathers detailed information on household and individual assets, liabilities, income and consumption in Ireland.
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.
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.
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 assets and liabilities.
For the Household Finance and Consumption 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:
Department of Social Protection: DSP Payments-Long and Short Term Social Welfare Payments Data
Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine: Animal Identification and Movement Data, Single farm payments
Office of Revenue Commissioners: Income Tax Form 11 and PAYE Income data
Student Universal Support Ireland (SUSI): Grant Application and Payment Data
Local Authority HAP Shared Services Centre: Housing Assistance Payments
Residential Tenancies Board (RTB): Data on rents paid by tenants
Central Bank of Ireland: Central credit register data on loans, credit cards and overdrafts
Higher Education Authority: data on level of education attained by 3rd level graduates
Stephen Lee, Income Consumption and Wealth, Central Statistics Office, Skehard Road, Cork, T12 X00E.
Tel: (+353) 21 4535045 E-mail: Stephen.Lee@cso.ie
Or
Andrew Powell, Household Data Collection, Central Statistics Office, Skehard Road, Cork, T12 X00E.
Tel: (+353) 21 4535341 E-mail: Andrew.Powell@cso.ie
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.