Register of Public Sector Bodies 2021 - Final

The public sector in Ireland is composed of general government and all corporations (financial or non-financial) which are under public control.

The general government sector (S.13) in Ireland is made up of central (S.1311) and local (S.1313) government sectors and social security funds (S.1314). It is the set of all bodies which:

1. are directly or indirectly controlled by a government department or office, or by a local authority;
and which either,

2. lack autonomy of decision and the power to own assets/liabilities, and/or do not produce a full set of accounts (the ‘institutional unit’ test); or

3. are non-market producers (the ‘market/non-market’ test).

A corporation in the non-financial (S.11) or financial (S.12) sectors is defined as public when it is controlled by government, otherwise it is private. These corporations cover at least 50% of their operational costs from their own sources of income and are hence classified outside the general government sector. The diagram below illustrates how the public sector includes general government along with public corporations in the non-financial or financial sectors.

The Register of Public Sector Bodies 2021 – Final lists 856 public sector bodies, see Figure 2.1 below.

A complete list of the Register is available here Register of Public Sector Bodies 2021 - Final Table 1.1 (XLS 52KB)    

A CSV file is also available here Register of Public Sector Bodies 2021 - Final Table 1.1csv (XLS 55KB)

The next chapters outline Central Government, Local Government sectors and Social Security Funds. The Background Notes outline the criteria and the statistical classification decision making process. 

Figure 2.1 Breakdown of Public Sector