Vol. 560 No. 1
173 Mr. Boyle asked the Taoiseach the additional resources being made available to the Central Statistics Office to allow for compilation of statistics on poverty in Irish society compared to similar statistics available in other European countries [2073/03]
At the end of 2001, the EU Commission put forward a proposal for a Council and Parliament regulation to initiate an annual series of EU-wide surveys on income and living conditions, EU-SILC, from January 2003. This survey will serve as the main source of statistics on poverty and related issues throughout the Union. However, examination of the proposal has been slower than originally expected and the regulation will not now be adopted until the middle of this year. As a result, the mandatory starting date for the surveys has been put back to January 2004, although countries in a position to commence in 2003 are encouraged to do so. These surveys will replace the voluntary European Community household panel surveys which were conducted in most EU countries, including Ireland, up until 2001.
The allocation to the CSO in the Abridged Estimates Volume for 2003 did not include explicit provision for conducting the survey in 2003. However, a range of Departments concerned with social inclusion and combating poverty considered that priority should be given to commencing the survey in 2003. Accordingly, discussions are ongoing about a transfer of a total of €900,000 from the budgets of nine Departments to the CSO and this, together with a grant of approximately €300,000 from the EU Commission, should enable the office to start the survey in June of this year.
