My Department utilises a broad range of different types of information to inform policy, including data from the CSO and other public bodies, data collected as part of the implementation of Departmental programmes and data collected by its agencies. This latter category may include data collected through public surveys including, for example, the Arts during Lockdown National Survey, conducted on behalf of the Arts Council and the Irish Sports Monitor, conducted on behalf of Sport Ireland.
Consultation with stakeholders and the public also typically forms part of the Department's policy development process and may take a number of forms depending on the policy and sector involved. The most recent example of such engagement is the stakeholder engagement forum and online public consultation as part of the development of the pilot basic income scheme for the arts. For the online public consultation, members of the public and organisations were invited to make submissions in response to a published consultation document.
My Department has not, however, commissioned any specific polling of the general public in the period in question.