Vol. 519 No. 6
14 Mr. Quinn asked the Taoiseach the inquiry which has been held into the circumstances in which the Central Statistics Office issued data on 31 March 2000 regarding retail sales figures which gave a deceptively low indication of the level of retail inflation for the year to the end of January 2000; the procedures which have been put in place to ensure that such an error is not repeated; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12751/00]
An error was made in decomposing the January 2000 provisional retail sales index increase published on 31 March into its price and volume components which resulted in the implied annual price change in the retail sector being too low. An inadvertent error was involved, not one of a methodological nature. This was identified in a calculation of the final detailed retail sales index for January 2000 and a correction was issued by the Central Statistics Office on 11 April 2000. Procedures have been put in place to ensure that this error is not repeated.
I am fully satisfied with the procedures in place in the CSO to ensure that reliable and timely statistics are made available to users and I commend the CSO on its long standing policy of publicy correcting any errors identified in the statistics it publishes.
Can the Minister of State outline what the inadvertent error was and what assurances has he been given that it will not be repeated? We are all human; mistakes can be made and I am not looking for a scapegoat.
It appears that when the office was decomposing the January 2000 provisional retail sales index figures into their price and volume components an annual price change was applied to that breakdown. The error occurred at that point. I cannot be more clear about the technical nature of the error than that.
