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Survey Name

Survey on Income and Living Conditions

Survey purpose and legal basis

The Survey on Income and Living Conditions 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 which is held yearly to comply with the requirement of Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003 concerning community statistics on income and living conditions. This survey has been undertaken by the CSO every year since 2004.

The Survey on Income and Living Conditions gathers detailed information on household and individual income and living conditions in Ireland.  It provides a number of key national poverty indicators, that will help monitor progress in the fight against poverty.

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 Survey on Income and Living Conditions, 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

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 tenant

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

Mark O’Brien, Household Survey Processing, Central Statistics Office, Skehard Road, Cork, T12 X00E, Office, Skehard Road, Cork, T12 X00E,

Tel: (+353) 21 453 5304 E-mail: mark.obrien@cso.ie

Or

Caitriona O’Brien, Household Survey Processing, Central Statistics Office, Skehard Road, Cork, T12 X00E, Office, Skehard Road, Cork, T12 X00E,

Tel: (+353) 21 453 5777 E-mail: caitriona.obrien@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: