Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 12 Nov 1996

Vol. 471 No. 4

Written Answers - Beijing Platform for Action.

Máire Geoghegan-Quinn

Question:

43 Mrs. Geoghegan-Quinn asked the Taoiseach when the Government proposes to implement paragraph 206(g) of the Beijing Platform for Action, 1995; the way in which it will be implemented; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20893/96]

The Taoiseach

Strategic objective H.3 of the Beijing Platform for Action makes a number of recommendations concerning the compilation of gender-disaggregated statistics. Many of the statistics complied by the CSO already comply with these recommendations.

Paragraph 206 (g) refers specifically to the conduct of time-use studies and to the evaluation of unwaged work as an extension of the standard National Accounts. The Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat) is currently co-ordinating the design and implementation of time-use surveys, on a pilot basis, in the EU. The CSO has taken part in the relevant preparatory discussions and hopes to be able to carry out a small-scale pilot study during 1997. Time-use studies, in which members of a national representative sample of households keep a detailed diary of their activities for a period of about one week, are relatively expensive to conduct and place a considerable burden on respondents.

In the National Accounts area, the CSO's priority is to extend the limited range of data available at present to comply with the full detail of the core EU national accounting system. This is a legal requirement laid down in the recently adopted Council Regulation on the European System of National and Regional Accounts in the Community. Satellite accounts, including the measurement of unwaged work, are outside the core system and given resource constraints priority is not, therefore, at present being given to their development. However, the CSO will continue to keep in touch with the ongoing methodological developments in this area at international level.