Press Statement

Preasráiteas

26 October 2021

Go to release: Well-being Information Hub

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (26 October 2021) launched an interactive Well-being Information Hub which attempts to provide overarching real-time answers to the question: “How is Ireland doing?”  

Commenting on the launch, Keith McSweeney, Senior Statistician said: “We can no longer rely solely on traditional economic indicators to capture the variety and richness of life and the experiences of people. A broader based set of indicators is needed to tell the story of Ireland and the lived reality of its people. The experience of living through a pandemic has highlighted the importance of a range of social indicators – a sense of social connectedness or mental health to name just two – and this Well-being Information Hub brings that ‘softer’ data together with ‘harder’ economic indicators to ensure a balanced presentation of the story of life in Ireland.

There are many ways to assess how Ireland is doing – seeing changes over time, comparing Ireland internationally and also looking more deeply at intergenerational differences and differences by sex within Ireland. This Well-being Information Hub pulls all this important information for Ireland together into one location. A key feature of the Information Hub is that it is interactive – the Hub is linked to the primary data source which underpins it, and so will automatically update when the primary data source is updated. This innovation ensures that the Hub will remain up to date and will provide real-time insight into how our country is doing. The Hub is targeted at those who quickly want to get a sense of how our country is doing. More extensive data and related analysis is still available for those users that require more in-depth data.”

More about the Well-being Information Hub

The Well-being Hub is a part of broader cross-Government work to develop and promote a Well-being approach to policy-making and analysis. An overarching Well-being Framework for Ireland has been developed by Government, which clearly defines all the important elements for collective Well-being in Ireland. The CSO’s Well-being Information Hub flows from this overarching Framework. The Well-being Information Hub is located on the main CSO’s website or can be accessed directly here and covers the following themes, encompassing a range of objective and subjective measures:

1. Subjective Well-being
2. Mental and Physical Health
3. Income and Wealth
4. Knowledge and Skills
5. Housing and Local Area
6. Environment, Climate and Biodiversity
7. Safety and Security
8. Work and Job Quality
9. Time Use
10. Community, Social Connections and Cultural Participation
11. Civic Engagement and Cultural Expression

Further commenting on the Well-being Information Hub, Keith McSweeney, said: “Given the range of many different objective and subjective measures, it is very difficult to bring them together into one composite measure of how Ireland is doing. The Hub contains 34 different indicators, which in turn can be analysed by areas like age and sex. Individuals will, depending on their own experiences, naturally assign different weights to the relative importance of each of the Well-being domains. One of the aims of the Hub is to more easily provide a way for users to examine areas for themselves and to draw out their own understanding of how Ireland is doing in a particular area and to perhaps consider the trade-offs which can sometimes be inherent in how we live our lives. For example, if one’s income is increasing due to working longer hours this could have implications for the time available for leisure and voluntary activities. 

Looking at some of the indicators, we can see that some areas are improving over time in Ireland and a number of areas compare favourably internationally, such as healthy life years and some labour market and income indicators.

In contrast, some environmental indicators show a dis-improvement over time, and within some of the indicators there are differences in the lived experience for different groups of the population, for example we can see that unemployed persons are experiencing higher levels of mental ill-health. The story of Ireland is a complex one if it is to be told in a balanced way, and this Hub provides a gateway into the key factors which influence the quality of our lives.” 

More about the Well-being Information Hub features and future data collection aims

Commenting on the data which underpins the Hub, Keith McSweeney said: “It is evident that the so-called ‘harder’ economic data are more regularly available than what may be classed as the ‘softer’, more subjective data. Work on the Hub has helped to highlight the data gaps which exist, both in terms of availability and frequency of a range of social and human capital indicators, and this Hub is providing an impetus for new data collections which will add to the data landscape of the story of Ireland. We want this Hub to be helpful, and over time the Hub will be refreshed to ensure that we have data on a broader range of indicators and topics and more frequent data. We want to ensure that we are measuring the right things and we will continue to add features that reflect the lived reality of our people.

Housing data is central to the analysis of Well-being in Ireland and whilst some housing indicators show improvement (for example in the quality of the housing stock as regards energy ratings), it is acknowledged that more indicators are needed in this area. Within a few weeks, there will be updated data available on housing affordability in Ireland, and work to identify and address more data gaps in the housing area is progressing.”

The Central Statistics Office wishes to note the Inter-departmental nature of the work on this Well-being Information Hub. Working with the lead Departments of the Taoiseach, Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform, an Interdepartmental group worked to identify the key data needed for inclusion in the Hub, and in parallel to this, the National Economic and Social Council provided feedback as the work progressed also. This work was invaluable to the creation of the Hub and the final report to Government can be seen at here. As part of this cross-Government work, the Government today is launching a public conversation on Ireland’s Well-being Framework, which aims to create awareness, test the framework and to get a sense of people’s priorities. This includes the publication of a Well-being Portal which will allow users to explore the initiative in more depth. It also provides some initial analysis of how Ireland is doing and highlights ongoing and future work in the area.

Further information on public conversation

The public conversation on the Well-being Framework for Ireland will include a broad programme of engagement with both internal and external stakeholders and wider society. This will include a social media campaign, survey, a wide-ranging stakeholder event, and a series of workshops and discussions that will explore specific areas of interest such as the views of young people, how to promote sustainable Well-being for future generations, maximising linkages between national and local approaches and closing data gaps.

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