900. Deputy Pádraig Rice asked the Minister for Social Protection the tools or metrics her Department uses to measure poverty in Ireland; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [1717/25]

Official poverty data is published annually by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) in the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC). This is an annual voluntary survey of c. 5,000 households (c. 12,000 individuals) carried out by the CSO. The survey collects information on the income and living conditions of different households in Ireland, in order to derive indicators on poverty, deprivation and social exclusion.

This CSO survey is part of a wider European survey (EU SILC) carried out in every EU country under EU legislation and commenced in Ireland in June 2003. Eurostat, the statistical arm of the European Commission, uses the results to compare income and living conditions throughout the European Union.

It should be noted that the income reference period for SILC is the previous calendar year. For example, the income referenced for the 2023 survey spans the period from January to December 2022. Information was collected from January to June 2023.

A person is in consistent poverty if they are both income poor and deprived. Thus, consistent poverty is the overlap of two component indicators: at-risk-of-poverty (measuring individuals whose household income is below 60% of the median) and basic deprivation (capturing individuals lacking 2 or more of 11 basic necessities).

The 2023 consistent poverty rate was 3.6% down from 4.9% in 2022. The at-risk-of-poverty rate also decreased from 12.5% in 2022 to 10.6% in 2023. However, there was an increase in the percentage of people living in enforced deprivation from 16.6% in 2022 to 17.3% in 2023.