Attendees:
Loretta O’Sullivan (BOI), Martin O’Brien (CB), Tom McDonnell (NERI), Niall McInerney (ESRI), Eddie Casey (IFAC), Ian Power (DoF), Diarmaid Smyth (CB), Austin Hughes (KBC), Michael Connolly (CSO), Christopher Sibley (CSO), Orla McCarthy (CSO).
Apologies:
Seamus Coffey (UCC)
Orla McCarthy gave a presentation on the work of the CSO’s Large Cases Unit; focussing on the analysis and data consistency checking that is carried out.
Austin Hughes said that a brief technical note explaining the causes of volatility in the production and trade indices would be useful to analysts.
Christopher Sibley gave a summary of the work of two European Task Forces looking at revisions to macro-economic data. One is dealing with benchmark revisions and one with routine revisions.
The benchmark group is looking at defining European benchmark years, such as 2021, where countries would seek to align all data. While the routine revisions group is discussing at which point during the year is most suitable to carry out revisions and the depth (in quarters) of those revisions.
Michael Connolly described the development work currently being undertaken in National Accounts. The main items were:
He also gave an outline of topics of interest in International Developments - AEG National Accounts, specifically:
Martin O’Brien raised several short-term and long-term issues with CSO data.
CSO answered two of the questions raised, two files have been attached presenting data available on the Eurostat database for both the distinction between Household Final Consumption and Government Consumption on an ESA basis and the breakdown of the elements of GDP on an income basis i.e. Gross Operating Surplus, Compensation of Employees etc.
The CB highlighted that while the final consumption and GFCF breakdowns are made available through Eurostat that there is a lag between these and the publication of the QNA and they asked if the data could be published by CSO at the time of the QNA release.
Other requests requiring a breakdown of data into Multinational and Domestic sectors in a number of National Accounts presentations were discussed. The CSO explained that this and some of the other issues regarding more detailed breakdown of data will not be possible until the National Accounts IT project has been completed. Our primary goal is to produce the Multinational Release (annual) on a quarterly basis.
The Central Bank requested more detailed information on the size and causes of revisions to historic data at the time of the press release. The CSO acknowledged the importance of this, and agreed to look at incorporating this into the press release.
There were several items discussed relating to the Sector Accounts. The group agreed that a CSO tutorial on Sector Accounts would be of value.
It was agreed that the next meeting would be held in early July, after the NIE release. The tutorial on Sector Accounts is to be scheduled for a later meeting, likely to be in October.