A CSO Frontier Series Output- What is this?
In this value chain analysis, we describe the ICT sector in detail drawing mainly on three National Accounts areas:
National Accounts provide a coherent and detailed picture of a country’s whole economy using international statistical standards. For this publication we have brought together the work done in these publications and narrowed the focus from the whole economy to provide insights into the ICT sector.
This Value Chain Analysis has drawn on many CSO outputs and these include:
All data taken from the Annual National Income and Expenditure Accounts uses the 2020 vintage (Reference year 2019). We also use statistics from other agencies to provide a detailed economic portrait of the ICT sector in Ireland:
The Foreign-Domestic split of companies and employment in the publication is facilitated primarily through the use of the CSO Business Register.
This publication groups firms by activity (also referred to as industry) using the EU’s Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community (NACE) Rev. 2 grouping. For clarity and confidentiality, we have used tripartite subsectors. The economic activities within each subsector are outlined below. Further information can be found on the Eurostat website.
1. Software and Other Media (58-60)
58: Publishing activities
58.1: Publishing of books, periodicals and other publishing activities
58.2: Software publishing
59: Motion picture, video and television programme production, sound recording and music publishing activities
59.1: Motion picture, video and television programme activities
59.2: Sound recording and music publishing activities
60: Programming and broadcasting activities
60.1: Radio broadcasting
60.2: Television programming and broadcasting activities
2. Telecommunications (61)
61: Telecommunications
61.1: Wired telecommunications activities
61.2 Wireless telecommunications activities
61.3: Satellite telecommunications activities
61.9: Other telecommunications activities
3. Information Technology and Other Information Services (62-63)
62: Computer programming, consultancy and related activities
63: Information service activities
63.1: Data processing, hosting and related activities; web portals
63.9: Other information service activities
Products are grouped using the EU’s Statistical Classification of Products by Activity (CPA) Rev. 2.1 grouping. In the Producers chapter, ICT products have been grouped into a tripartite structure. These are the CPA codes in the three categories
1. IT
58: Publishing services (part)
58.2: Software publishing services
62: Computer programming, consultancy and related services
63: Information Services
63.1: Data processing, hosting and related services; web portals
63.9: Other information services
2. Communications
61: Telecommunications services
61.1: Wired telecommunications services
61.2: Wireless telecommunications services
61.3: Satellite telecommunications services
61.9: Other telecommunications services
3. Other
58: Publishing services (part)
58.1: Publishing services of books, periodicals and other publishing services
59: Motion picture, video and television programme production services, sound recording and music publishing
59.1: Motion picture, video and television programme services
59.2: Sound recording and music publishing services
60: Programming and broadcasting services
60.1: Radio broadcasting services
60.2: Television programming and broadcasting services; broadcasting originals
Output is estimated at basic prices (i.e., not including the value of product taxes, product subsidies and trade margins that are levied on products). The product classifications in this publication are matched to CPA codes at the most detailed level possible and aggregated to the higher level for confidentiality.
Intermediate consumption is estimated at purchasers’ prices (i.e. including the value of product taxes, product subsidies and trade margins). The data on intermediate consumption is taken from the CSO Supply and Use tables. The product classification of intermediate consumption by product is mapped to CPA codes at the most detailed level. Further product detail is estimated using sources used in creating the CSO Supply and Use publication.
Further information on the terminology and data used in the Productivity chapter can be found here: Productivity in Ireland 2019.
The Small,Medium and Large classification for productivity analysis follows the standard Business Demography Publication.
Exports are estimated at purchasers’ prices. However, there is little difference between exports at purchasers’ prices and exports at basic prices in practice. Imports are estimated at basic prices. Exports and imports of come from the CSO Balance of Payments- Trade in Services. The data is provided to us in the EBOPS product classification. We map this data to CPA product codes.
The education data shown in the Labour chapter is taken from the Census of Population 2016 – Profile 10 Education, Skills and the Irish Language publication. While the data available from that publication shows thirteen distinct education categories, this value chain publication has summarised these into four groups:
The ICT occupations data shown in the Labour chapter is taken from the Census 2016 Profile 11 – Employment, Occupations and Industry publication. This publication classifies occupations into 329 distinct categories. The following eleven occupations were labelled as ICT occupations in this publication:
As mentioned in the publication, the ICT sector is dominated by a small number of large corporations. The CSO cannot publish any commercially sensitive information (for example, company wage bills), or any statistics that would allow readers to easily infer data for a single company. For this reason, data is put together into larger groups (aggregated) so that no single statistic is completely dominated by a single company. While more detail would generally be preferable, by keeping some statistics confidential, the CSO can assure survey respondents that their data will not be shared, and this provides higher quality statistics overall.
Learn about our data and confidentiality safeguards, and the steps we take to produce statistics that can be trusted by all.