About Us

Irish statistics were compiled under the provisions of the Statistics Acts, 1926 and 1946 up until 1 November 1994 when the Statistics Act, 1993 came into operation.

› Statistics Act, 1993
› An tAcht Staidrimh, 1993 (PDF)

The 1993 Statistics Act underpins the statistical independence of the CSO on a statutory basis by providing that :

"The Director General shall have the sole responsibility for and be independent in the exercise of the functions of deciding-

(a) the statistical methodology and professional statistical standards used by the Office;

(b) the content of statistical releases and publications issued by the Office; and

(c) the timing and methods of dissemination of statistics compiled by the Office"

(Section 13, Statistics Act 1993)

The other principal features of the Statistics Act, 1993 are:

• the establishment of the Central Statistics Office (CSO), the post of Director General and the National Statistics Board on a statutory basis;
• reinforcement of the existing statutory confidentiality provisions for data collected by the CSO from survey respondents and other sources;
• CSO authority to co-ordinate the statistics produced by other public bodies;
• increased CSO powers to access administrative records for statistical purposes;
• provision for forms completed in the Census of Population conducted since the formation of the State to be accessed after 100 years (the returns for the 1901 and 1911 Censuses conducted under UK legislation are accessible in the National Archives);
• provision for anonymised micro data to be made available for research purposes.

The Act fully reflects the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics adopted by the UN Economic Commission for Europe in 1992.

In accordance with Section 8(c) of the Data Protection Act, 1988 any restrictions in that Act on the disclosure of personal data do not apply in the case of the CSO if it requests such disclosure as a requirement (other than for the Courts, Garda Síochána, Prison Administration, Ombudsman and Medical Records) under Section 30 of the Statistics Act, 1993.