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Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 2 July 2019

Tuesday, 2 July 2019

Questions (132)

Thomas P. Broughan

Question:

132. Deputy Thomas P. Broughan asked the Taoiseach his plans to extend the key economic and social metrics employed by the CSO to indicate all aspects of the well-being of persons, along the lines being pursued in New Zealand and other jurisdictions. [27469/19]

View answer

Written answers

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) compiles a wide range of statistics and indicators related to well-being, and aims to deliver these results in thematic reports and formats which promote good use of relevant statistics. The CSO appreciates that Government and policy-makers need to know how Ireland is performing in a general sense; need data to assess economic, social and environmental conditions; and require evidence to evaluate policy outcomes.

Well-being, in its broadest sense, can be viewed as a measure of how people feel about their lives as a whole and as a measure of all aspects of life. As a result, it is a complex multi-dimensional issue influenced by factors such as the state of the environment, the educational levels of the population, economic performance, public safety, and the health of the population, amongst other factors.

The most prominent report on this topic published by the CSO is The Wellbeing of the Nation 2017. This report was published in January 2018 and provides a series of indicators across eight domains. The domains were selected based on their importance to well-being and they encompass many aspects of people’s everyday life. They have also been selected to be in line with international best practice where possible, whilst also remaining relevant to Irish information needs. The table below shows the domains and corresponding indicators.

Domains and corresponding indicators featured in The Wellbeing of the Nation 2017

Domain

Indicators

Economy

Average debt per household

Modified Gross National Income (GNI*)

Average total annual earnings

Consumer price index

Work

Unemployment rate

Long-term unemployment rate

Employment rate of those with a disability

Percentage working greater than 48 hours per week

Enforced job instability

Discrimination in the workplace

Education

Educational attainment

Early school leavers indicator

Digital skills of those aged 16-74

Programme for international student assessment (PISA) mathematics score

Housing and natural Environment

Homelessness

Air quality

River water quality

Recovered packaging recycling rates

Governance and Equality

Female representation in Dáil Éireann

Consistent poverty rate

Equality of income distribution

Percentage that experienced discrimination

Health

Self-perceived health

Healthy life years at birth

Overweight/obesity

Binge drinking at least once a week

Deaths by suicide

Public Safety

Self-reported victimisation

Worry about becoming a victim of personal crime or theft and damage

Perception of seriousness of crime in Ireland

Number of injuries or fatalities from road traffic accidents

Time Use

Volunteering

Participation in sport

Average weekly household expenditure on sports and leisure

Commuting time

Other related work undertaken by the CSO includes the presentation, in co-operation with Ordnance Survey Ireland, of geospatial information on the EU and UN Sustainable Development Goals (see https://www.cso.ie/en/unsdgs/). Further work is under way this year on a CSO thematic report on the SDGs; and the CSO is also developing a set of energy poverty indicators.

To aid with communicating statistics and indicators on well-being, the CSO has also begun work on an interactive well-being dashboard, which will be similar to the Key Short-term Economic Indicators dashboard on the CSO website (https://www.cso.ie/en/statistics/keyeconomicindicators/). The aim of the dashboard will be to present up-to-date statistics on well-being in an easily accessible way.

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