The public sector in Ireland is composed of general government and all corporations (financial or non-financial) which are under public control.

The general government sector (S.13) in Ireland is made up of central government (S.1311) and local government (S.1313) sectors and social security funds (S.1314). It is the set of all bodies which:

1. are directly or indirectly controlled by a government department or office, or by a local authority;
and which either,

2. lack autonomy of decision and the power to own assets/liabilities, and/or do not produce a full set of accounts (the ‘institutional unit’ test); or

3. are non-market producers (the ‘market/non-market’ test).

A corporation in the non-financial (S.11) or financial (S.12) sectors is defined as public when it is controlled by government, otherwise it is private. These corporations cover at least 50% of their operational costs from their own sources of income and are hence classified outside the general government sector. Figure 2.1 below illustrates the breakdown of the public sector comprising 862 public sector bodies. 

A complete list of the Register is available on the Register of Public Sector Bodies - Provisional Table 1.1 (XLS 50KB) .

A CSV file is also available on the Register of Public Sector Bodies - Provisional Table 1.1 csv file.

The next chapters outline Central Government, Local Government sectors and Social Security Funds.

This publication contains a new chapter on Public Corporations.

The Background Notes outline the criteria and the statistical classification decision making process. 

Figure 2.1 Breakdown of Public Sector