The development of official Irish statistics

Abstract

The trail of the development of and responsibility for Official Statistics that I am following in this presentation starts effectively from the Larcom involvement in the 1841 Census of Population (Section 2) and leads to: (a) the Registrar-General?s Office (from 1851) (Section 3); (b) the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland (from 1900) (Section 4); (c) the Statistics Branch of the Department of Industry and Commerce (from 1923) (Section 5); (d) the setting up in 1949, albeit on a non-statutory basis, of the CSO attached to the Department of the Taoiseach; followed by two significant events (Section 6): membership of the European Economic Communities in 1973; setting up of the National Statistics Board in 1986; (e) finally to 1994 when the Central Statistics Office and the National Statistics Board and the Director General of CSO were established on a statutory basis (Section 7). During all this period the scope of ?official statistics? widened considerably and the degree of centralised responsibility increased significantly.