I move:—
That a sum not exceeding £4,000 be granted to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending 31st March, 1950, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Central Statistics Office.
Committee on Finance. - Vote 72—Central Statistics Office.
As this is a new Estimate, has the Minister anything to say about the setting up of this office in the Taoiseach's Department?
The purpose is that there was a desire to put the office on a better basis. It is intended to increase the importance of the office and also, of course, to increase its activities. It was thought that the Taoiseach's Department was the most suitable Department to co-ordinate the activities of the new office. While this is a new Estimate and involves a sum of £4,000, Deputies will understand that, of course, in the main, the bulk of the expenditure in the current financial year is on, and will be borne out of, the Vote for one of the offices of the Department of Industry and Commerce. Next year there will be a transfer of that sum, which is a pretty big sum, with whatever is the addition to the new Vote.
As far as this year is concerned there is one new post, the post of deputy director. We have definitely decided on that and the personnel for it. That is also part of this effort to speed up the compilation of official statistics. In the main, any comments that have been made by Deputies with regard to official statistics are that they are rather late when produced so as to be somewhat out of date and that we have not got statistics covering a wide enough field. It is hoped to meet both objections by the provision we are making.
In addition, there are four extra statisticians recruited by the Civil Service Commissioners. They are in replacement of four posts of administrative officers who were in the statistics branch of the Department of Industry and Commerce. Two of these are being sent to the United States for a course of eight months' special study and training in practical statistical work that comes under the scheme that has been promoted for economic cooperation administration for rendering technical instruction available, including instruction of this type. We are trying to build up the strength of the office and to give it a greater field of activity, and the change-over from the Department of Industry and Commerce to the Taoiseach's Department is partly to mark the special importance associated with the office and also to give the Director of Statistics more in the way of independence even than what he had. I am not saying that he was to any degree curtailed. We hope he will be in an even more independent position than he was.
Will the Taoiseach answer for this particular Estimate in future or the Minister for Finance?
The accounting side will be done by my office. There will be no special accounts side put into that office. In future, I will answer for it as this year.
Mr. de Valera
Discussion of the Department will come under the Taoiseach's Vote, I take it, because the ruling to-day would seem to preclude discussion of the separate Votes.
If the Deputy wants discussion of this new office, I am quite certain it can be arranged.
Mr. de Valera
I do not want it now. The question is as to the future.
We will certainly get an arrangement that, either on the group taken by the Minister for Finance or on the Taoiseach's Estimate, there will be discussion of this office. We will certainly get some arrangement.
Might I ask the Minister whether, in connection with the change in the direction of the Statistics Office, it is proposed to speed up the calculation of the national income?
It is indeed. It is one of the things we are specially interested in.
Is it also proposed to get information of a kind not procurable before such as the level of private investment in relation to cyclic depressions?
I could not say what is in mind in such detail, but certainly the national income and its expenditure—the follow-up of that pamphlet—is being taken in hands and I hope to get that out fairly soon.
Vote put and agreed to.