Loretta O’Sullivan (BOI), John Hartnett (D/Fin), Martin Erskine (D/Fin), Wendy Disch (ESRI), Annette Hughes (EY), Kevin Timoney (IFAC), Killian Carroll (IFAC), Austin Hughes (KBC), Simon Barry (Ulster Bank), Seamus Coffey (UCC).
CSO: Chris Sibley, John Sheridan, Justin Flannery, Ruth O’Shaughnessy.
Developments to Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE) data were reviewed. In NIE 2020, the PCE product classifications were updated to the international Classification of Individual Consumption by Purpose (COICOP) codes. Justin Flannery presented the new COICOP breakdown of Table 13 (Consumption of Personal Income at Current Market Prices), and the new Actual Individual Consumption (AIC) measure. AIC is a broader and more internationally comparable measure of household welfare than PCE. It includes all items measured by PCE, but general government purchases are not limited to market producers. Instead, AIC covers all individual expenditure. The impact of a methodological change in the classification of local authorities from market to non-market, and the deflators used in the chain-linked PCE series were also discussed.
There is ongoing work within the CSO to provide a more granular breakdown of Capital Formation data. The revised deflators used in the compilation of the Capital Formation statistics were discussed.
Different approaches to the calculation of annual growth rates were reviewed. The more correct methodology, used by the CSO and approved by Eurostat, is to use the unadjusted data, rather than the sum of the four seasonally-adjusted quarters, in the calculation.