asked the Taoiseach if he will arrange to have a special consumer price index compiled by the Central Statistics Office with a view to measuring the impact of, and changes in the cost of living on old age pensioners and persons in receipt of home assistance.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Consumer Price Index.
3.
I do not propose to have a special series of consumer price index numbers compiled by the Central Statistics Office for the purposes mentioned by the Deputy.
To enable such a series to be compiled information would be required regarding the expenditure pattern of old age pensioners and persons in receipt of home assistance. This information is not available and an expensive investigation, on the lines of the Household Budget Inquiry, 1951-52, would be needed to obtain it. Unlike the earlier inquiry such an investigation would have to be extended to rural as well as to urban dwellers and an attempt would have to be made, in the case of persons not living alone, to assign to them an appropriate share of the total expenditure of the household in which they live.
Furthermore, as was shown in the article entitled "New Series of Consumer Price Index Numbers" which appeared in the December, 1953, issue of the Irish Trade Journal and Statistical Bulletin, there was relatively little difference, in the period from August, 1947, to August, 1953, in the consumer price index numbers appropriate to five different social groups, to households of varying size and to households with different levels of income per head. It does not, therefore, appear likely that the index numbers of the type requested by the Deputy would diverge sufficiently widely from the Official Series to warrant the trouble and cost involved in their compilation