Business in Ireland 2011

CSO report focuses on the contribution of SMEs to the business economy

This is the third year of the consolidated annual report on Business in Ireland. It was initiated to provide an overview of the Structural Business Statistics currently produced by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

The report this year again focuses on the activities and performance of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Chapter 3, which is dedicated to the analysis of SMEs, has been expanded to include a categorisation of SMEs into Irish-owned or foreign-owned enterprises who were either engaged or not in international trade. Chapter 5 looks more specifically at the performance of SMEs compared to large enterprises while Chapter 6 looks at the breakdown of the business costs faced by SMEs.

There is one new chapter which expands the scope of the report:

• Business Costs in Ireland (Chapter 6) examines personnel costs and its constituent parts of wages & salaries and employers’ social security costs. Total purchases of goods and services by enterprises are also analysed in terms of broad sector and size class.

There are two special articles in the report this year:

• International Sourcing Survey 2009 to 2011 - a case study for systematic micro data linking (Barra Casey, CSO)
• The Distribution Sector in Ireland (Don Forde, CSO)

See Chapter 1 of the report for the Six Key Findings from Business in Ireland 2011.

Data sources

Irish data presented in this report are available on StatBank, the main data dissemination service on the CSO website. The data presented in this report are only a small fraction of the Structural Business Statistics available online.

For further information contact:

Barra Casey (021) 453 5770 or                              Phone: LoCall 1890 313 414

Mary Duggan (021) 453 5584                                 (021) 453 5000 or (01) 498 4000

Results, Analysis and Publications Section               Fax:(021) 453 5553

Structural Business Statistics                                 Internet: www.cso.ie

Central Statistics Office                                          E-mail: Industry_RAP@cso.ie

Central Statistics Office                                                               1 November 2013

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