Apologies have been received from Senators Byrne and Stephenson and from Deputies Cronin and Neville.

I advise members of the constitutional requirement that they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex in order to participate in a public meeting. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative that they comply with any such direction.

We will suspend briefly while the witnesses take their seats.

Today, we are meeting with the Central Statistics Office and the Economic and Social Research Institute to discuss the capacity and capability for delivering national infrastructural development in line with future population growth and demographic trends. I am pleased to welcome from the Central Statistics Office, Mr. Richard McMahon, assistant director general for housing and demography statistics; and Mr. Timothy Linehan, senior statistician for life events and demography; and from the ESRI, Professor Martina Lawless, director; Dr. John Curtis, head of economics; Dr. Adele Bergin, research area co-ordinator for macroeconomics; Dr. Sheelah Connolly, research area co-ordinator for health; and Dr. Conor O'Toole, research area co-ordinator for housing.

Witnesses are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative they comply with any such direction.

I remind members they will be afforded a short speaking slot for questions and answers, with a second chance to contribute later, if they wish. I now invite our witnesses to make their opening statements for the Central Statistics Office and the Economic and Social Research Institute.

I thank the Cathaoirleach and the committee for the invitation to speak on this matter. I am assistant director general in the Central Statistics Office, with responsibility for demography statistics. I am joined by Mr. Tim Linehan, senior statistician in life events and demography.

The Central Statistics Office is Ireland's national statistical institute and is an independent office under the Statistics Act 1993. The CSO is responsible for the production, co-ordination and qualitative oversight of official statistics for Ireland. Our statistics support and promote understanding and debate across government, business and society. The census, which typically takes place every five years, underpins much of the data around population and demography. The census plays a key role in determining current and future infrastructure and service needs by providing high-quality statistical data at a national, regional and local level. On an annual basis the CSO also provides detailed vital statistics and population and migration statistics through a wide variety of releases.

In the context of providing insights on Ireland's capacity and capability for infrastructure, we would particularly like to discuss both future population growth and demographic trends from a CSO perspective. I preface our remarks by noting that, when we discuss population projections, we are not referring to forecasts but rather illustrations of what will happen if specific scenarios for migration, fertility and mortality take place. If we consider our current demographic trends as shown in our vital statistics and population and migration estimates releases, we see migration-led population growth, declining fertility rates and an ageing population. When we consider our data-driven population projections based on these current patterns, we see these trends potentially escalating over time. This would have major implications for national infrastructure planning both in terms of resources being allocated and potential spatial distribution.

For this discussion we will focus on four CSO publications: Vital Statistics Yearly Summary 2024, which analyses births, marriages and deaths; Population and Migration Estimates, April 2025, which includes our most recent annual national population and migration estimates; Population and Labour Force Projections 2023-2057, which looks at three national population projection scenarios to 2057 as well as labour force projections out to 2037 based on three differing levels of migration as well as specific fertility and mortality assumptions; Regional Population Projections 2023-2042, which applies the national projections at a regional level to see how populations may be potentially distributed. These CSO releases show current demographic trends and illustrate how these trends may appear in future if specific assumptions are made.

Looking at recent demographic trends, the usually resident population as of April 2025 was 5.4 million, which represents an increase of 78,000 over the preceding 12 months. The 12-month inward migration, or immigration, total to April 2025 was 125,000, which was a decrease of 16% since 2024 but still represents fourth year where inward migration exceeded 100,000. Outward migration, or emigration, was over 65,500, which gives a net migration, which is inward migration minus outward migration, of just under 60,000. The corresponding rate of natural increase, which is births minus deaths, was 18,600. When considering nationality, Irish citizens accounted for 31,500 of the inward migration number and 35,000 of the outward migration number. Recent population growth in Ireland is mainly driven by migration, and inward migration remains high overall despite recent decreases. In terms of infrastructure planning, this may indicate that migration-driven growth will concentrate infrastructure demand on housing, building, transport and services in arrival areas.

When we consider our yearly summary for 2024, we see trends with major implications for infrastructure. Over the past decade, the number of births registered fell from 67,000 in 2014 to 54,000 in 2024, with a corresponding decline in the total-period fertility rates from 1.9 in 2014 to 1.5 in 2024. This is well below the replacement level for the population of 2.1. The number of deaths has increased from 29,000 in 2014 to 35,000 in 2024, and the rate of natural increase, births minus deaths, has fallen from 38,000 in 2014 to almost 19,000 in 2024. These numbers indicate a potentially major reduction in the role of births in increasing the population as well as having implications for future education system planning. For infrastructure planning, on these trends a key point is that migration rather than fertility is expected to determine how populations are distributed throughout Ireland in the future.

In regard to changes in age structure and population distribution, there were 861,000 people living in Ireland aged 65 and over in April 2025. Those aged 65 and over showed an increase in population share between 2019 and 2025 rising from 14.1% to 15.8% of the total, which was a volume increase of just under 160,000 people. There were just over one million people living in Ireland aged 14 and under in April 2025. This age group had a fall in population share between 2019 and 2025, falling from 20.5% to 18.3% of the total population, a decrease of almost 15,500. The proportion of the population living in Dublin has risen from 28.2% of the total in 2019 to 28.7% of the total in 2025 and now stands just short of 1.6 million people. If these trends continue there may be a structural shift in infrastructure planning towards services required for an ageing population, such as health and care services. The older population is projected to increase significantly under all scenarios. By 2057 it could vary between 27.8% and 31.6% of the total population, depending on the scenario used. This trend may be exacerbated if mortality improvements continue.

In regard to population projection scenarios and the role of migration, the CSO's Population and Labour Force Projections 2023-2057, developed in conjunction with our national projections expert group, presents three national population scenarios. The expert group is a wide-ranging selected team of experts from across academia, the public service and other bodies, including policymakers, economists, demographers, actuaries, health and non-governmental agencies.

It is important to note that these are not forecasts but rather show what would happen to population and demography structures over long time windows under these specific scenarios. The approach taken by the expert group is data driven in that the range of assumptions is determined by integrating the group's expertise with recent CSO demographic data. Other agencies develop projections, generally based on their own sets of assumptions about input parameters. The CSO usually publishes population projections after each census. However, given the ever-changing pace of Irish population patterns, the CSO is developing a proposed annual administrative population projection series, which will take the same data-driven approach as the expert group.

The projections show the potential impacts of differing levels of migration, similar to ESRI and Department of Finance projections. The CSO's projected population in 2057 under these scenarios is 7 million for the high migration scenario, just under 6.5 million for the medium migration scenario, and just over 5.7 million for the low migration scenario. To simplify the analysis, the CSO applied the same fertility and mortality assumptions. Of further interest is that, under all scenarios, the rate of natural increase will continue to decrease. In fact, under all three scenarios the rate of natural increase will become negative between the mid- to late 2040s, and births will be exceeded by deaths. Furthermore, driven by migration, the labour force is projected to increase under all three potential population growth scenarios. Under high migration, the labour force is projected to increase by 610,000 by 2037 to 3.3 million persons. Under medium migration, the labour force is projected to increase by 485,000 to just under 3.2 million persons. Under low migration, the labour force is projected to increase by 337,000 persons, or 12.5%.

When considering these population projections at the regional level to 2042, we see some interesting patterns. The population in all regions is projected to increase, but there will be changes in the distribution between the regions. Across all the projection scenarios, between 2023 and 2042, the mid-east, which comprises Kildare, Louth, Meath and Wicklow, sees the largest regional growth, increasing from just under 15% to between 15.5% and 16.1%. Declines are predicted under the scenarios for the regions of the south west, which comprises Cork city and county and Kerry; the mid-west, which is Clare, Limerick and Tipperary; and the Border, which is Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Monaghan and Sligo.

The CSO statistics on demography and vital statistics as well as our population projections provide insights that may be of significance in considering both current and future infrastructure planning. We are happy to take questions from the committee to inform its consideration of this matter.

Thank you for that presentation, Mr. McMahon. There was a lot of detailed information in it. We will come back to ask you about it in a few minutes.

I thank the Chair for the invitation to the ESRI to appear before the committee and for the opportunity to discuss the ESRI's work on demographics and on issues relating to the delivery of the national development plan. I am the director of the ESRI, and I am joined by my colleagues Professor John Curtis, Dr. Adele Bergin, Dr. Sheelah Connolly and Dr. Conor O'Toole.

As the CSO has pointed out, Ireland's population has grown rapidly over the past 20 years, from 4.1 million in 2005 to an estimate of close to 5.5 million in 2025. To place this rate of growth in a broader context, the population across Europe has grown by approximately 4% over the past two decades while the Irish population has expanded by close to one third. The number of people in employment has similarly increased by approximately one third, from just under 2.1 million in 2005 to over 2.8 million in 2025. The challenge the national development plan must address is that infrastructure in a broad sense has struggled to keep up with this rapid expansion of population and economic activity.

ESRI and CSO projections expect that the population will continue to grow over the next 20 years, although not at as rapid a pace. The ESRI baseline scenario sees Ireland's population increasing by approximately 1.2 million between 2022 and 2050, to over 6.4 million by the end of that projection period. This growth comes alongside substantial shifts in the age distribution of the population. The share of those aged 65 and over is expected to increase from around 15% in 2022 to around 25% by 2050. Meanwhile, the working-age share, that is, 15- to 64-year-olds, falls from 65% to roughly 59%. As a result, the old-age dependency ratio almost doubles, meaning far fewer workers will be supporting each older person by mid-century.

The greater size of the population is important for economic activity and demand for infrastructure, energy, housing and public services in general. The shift in age structure also has substantial implications because the balance between working-age people and retirees influences economic growth, tax revenue and demand for public services, particularly in the areas of health and social care services.

It is important to note that this population growth is not evenly distributed across regions. Projections indicate stronger growth in parts of the eastern and midland region, especially Dublin and the surrounding commuter counties, driven by inward migration and labour market opportunities. In contrast, parts of the western and Border regions are projected to experience slower population growth. This uneven demographic pattern has implications for infrastructure planning and prioritisation as the scale, sequencing and composition of investment will vary across regions.

The national development plan sets out the key areas of priority for government investment up to the end of the decade to address the increased need for infrastructure and close the gap that has emerged as the population and economy have outgrown the existing levels of infrastructure in the country. Housing demand is a particularly visible area where considerable public and private investment is required. Energy infrastructure requirements are similarly substantial, with annual labour requirements estimated to be about 24,000 workers to meet just renewable energy and energy efficiency targets. In transport, transformational change is required to shift from a car-dependent system to one centred on sustainable mobility.

Healthcare faces pressure from both population ageing and strong demographic expansion. In 2025, the health team at the ESRI completed a body of work projecting demand and capacity requirements for a range of health and social care services to 2040. For each service examined, demand is projected to increase by at least 20%. However, due to the ageing of our population, demand for services used predominantly by older people will experience significantly higher increases. To give just one example, demand for nursing home beds is projected to increase by between 61% and 80%, resulting in a need for over 23,000 additional beds by 2040. This increase in demand will be seen across all health regions.

In examining the ambitious objectives of the NDP, the ESRI has identified substantial potential challenges to its delivery. The economy faces considerable capacity constraints, especially in the construction sector. With the economy operating at or close to full employment, the scope for significantly expanding the labour force domestically, in particular in the construction sector, is likely to be limited. For example, achieving higher housing output or implementing large-scale energy infrastructure would require tens of thousands of additional full-time workers. Injecting additional public investment into such a constrained environment risks driving inflation, especially wage inflation in construction, while also pulling labour away from other productive sectors.

Our modelling work notes that inflationary effects of increased construction demand could be significant in the short run. However, there is a potential trade-off as successful delivery of several NDP projects, particularly in housing and energy, could reduce inflationary pressures in the medium term. For example, increasing housing supply would lower rents and house prices, while investment in renewable energy would reduce exposure to volatile fossil fuel prices. Prioritisation and phasing of the investment will be an important element in minimising the immediate short-term risks to inflation while delivering on these longer term priorities.

The recent publication of the Government’s accelerating infrastructure task force report provides 30 actionable reform points to move the dial on infrastructure provision, including reforming and removing administrative blockages to infrastructure completion. The reforms suggested in this report are of the scale and magnitude needed to have meaningful structural change and remove administrative barriers to activity. Implementation of these reforms should be prioritised as a matter of urgency and these impacts are likely to be beneficial on a cross-sectoral basis.

I thank the committee very much. We are happy to take any questions.

I thank all our witnesses for joining us. I compliment one of their colleagues for his contribution during the Covid pandemic. Dr. Pete Lunn was constantly in the media and was very relatable and reliable. Communities and the country came to trust him and the message he was conveying when dealing with figures. A lot of this is complex. There is a lot of detail to it. The reason I give that example is that I almost feel like we need to have a similar conversation now regarding how we go forward with our current population trends. I would go so far as to say I do not think we are having it on a mainstream level. We might be having such conversations in rooms like this and having these discussions on how we are going to invest in different counties and projects and so on, but we are probably not having enough of a discussion on the airwaves. Maybe Dr. Lunn, or someone similar, could be assigned this task in future. There is a seriousness to my message in terms of how we need to convey some of these messages.

We are debating issues in the Chamber today around schools, SNAs and investment in that area. If we look at some of the trends, we are seeing a situation where there is a bulge of demand now, but if we were to fast-forward five to ten years, we will have built the new schools and classrooms and, all of a sudden, we will not be able to get the students. We need to look more and more at our human element as a greater part of the equation in respect of infrastructure. We talk about the time and money, but we do not talk about the human element in terms of numbers to the extent we should. When we talk about schools today, it will be nursing homes tomorrow and a 60% increase. There is a huge amount of communication to be done in this area on how we are going to prepare people for the future.

I did an exercise in relation to emergency accommodation. We talk about housing quite a bit and the need for supply. I look at a county like mine, and I would argue that we do not have the crisis we often hear about around the country. There is an element of interpretation. In terms of communications style and methods, I refer to interpretative maps where it would be possible to see where demand is likely to be forthcoming from a housing investment or development perspective. We are having discussions here on where we are seeing the roll-out in our main urban areas, and we want to see it going further. Should we be bringing it down to every town and village, though? Are there difficult decisions to be had there as to how that will evolve in future?

In relation to emergency accommodation, in particular, I did a study from January to July 2025 on Irish people in emergency accommodation. This is to tie back to the commentary on migration. It increased from January 2023 to 2025 by 12%. For the EEA and the UK, it was 24%. Non-EEA emergency accommodation increased by 134%. How are we going to manage the likes of that in future? I give it as a symbol of emergency accommodation. It also applies to social and affordable housing, and every single tier of that domino effect. How can we address this situation? Does the ESRI see those figures getting better or worse?

I thank the Deputy, especially for the compliment for Professor Lunn, which I will pass on to him. I agree on the general point on the scale of the challenges and that they impact such a wide range of sectors, including education, health and housing. It is potentially not high enough on the list for priority discussion. The discussion sometimes focuses on individual projects, and there is a lot of debate on local planning decisions, such as whether something should be here or over there. This is instead of looking at the entire map of the country and saying we have grown. As I said, the comparison with the rest of Europe, where the population has grown by 4% when Ireland's has grown by 30%, is really quite astounding. We are dealing with issues of demand on infrastructure that are on a completely different scale from a lot of our comparators. Those demands are going to continue to grow.

They really are across the board. I mentioned older people. The numbers of children are projected to largely stabilise, and perhaps slightly decline in years to come. That does not mean there is not also a huge capital investment needed in the education sector because the regional spread of that population is changing. The population is growing at a much slower rate in the west and the Border counties. There is no point in having lots of empty schools in counties Mayo and Sligo when the schools in Wicklow do not have enough capacity. Even where there are areas where the population growth looks like it is fairly steady, that does not mean there are not big demands building up.

Of course, we focus very much on those demands because the national development plan focuses a lot on infrastructure. We have spoken a lot about energy grids, buildings and that more physical infrastructure. As the Deputy points out, though, a lot of that physical infrastructure comes with demands for people as well. Dr. Connolly might come in on the healthcare demands. All those higher projections for hospital and nursing home beds, and so on, come with increased workforce requirements as well.

The emergency accommodation issue is related to that. Perhaps Dr. O'Toole might come in. He is our housing expert. This aspect really just shows that there are examples across the board. It is difficult to prioritise when the demands are building up across the sectors. This is why we talk very much about the need to think about the package as a whole and how to deliver it in a complementary and phased way that does not squeeze everything out in the economy.

When we think about the housing demands in the Irish economy now, estimates from us, which Dr. Bergin is involved in, the Central Bank and the Housing Commission point to a minimum of 50,000 to 60,000 housing units being required for demographic changes and to meet the pent-up demand to catch up on the period in the past. That is a major increase relative to where we are at present. Just over 36,000 units were built last year, so we are talking about doubling the housing output.

In respect of focusing here on one specific subgroup, that being the emergency accommodation area, if we think more broadly about households in Ireland and the composition of this housing demand, and looking back at other factors, like how much house prices and rents have increased in the past 20 years, it is very clear that the housing affordability challenges are concentrated more and more at the lower end of the income distribution. However, those affordability challenges are moving up that distribution such that the bottom half of the income distribution is finding housing affordability challenges more generally.

The question then is what this means when we are thinking about the NDP and planning for the future. It is going to mean that the State will have to be much more active than it was in the past in terms of the provision of housing for lower-income households.

Is that Dr. O'Toole's opinion or what is he basing it on?

Yes. Looking at all the research we have done on housing affordability and where house prices have moved relative to incomes, for example, and if we look at where it is affordable for different households to enter the housing market, we have a large number of papers on that, we need the type of supply that is non-market oriented. What is that? It is a major expansion of cost rental and a big increase in social housing. All of these non-market entities will have to be bigger in future than they were in the past. That is a very clear structural requirement on the NDP to have that provision of housing across the board.

In terms of capacity, though, for the likes of those schemes to be rolled out even further and expanded, could one not argue that we need further investment from the private sector to balance that?

Of course, we need both. Yes.

Okay.

We have been very clear across all of the research we have done and in regular quarterly economic commentary, of which I am a co-editor, in what we have always said.

The State is not going to be able to do all of this. We are going to need both the private sector and the public sector. The public sector has to focus on the areas where the private sector will not go, which will be at the lower end of income distribution where that viability gap would be greater between affordability and the cost of production which has risen hugely in the last number of years. In a sense, the State needs to be very strategic and to make sure that where it is making and supporting investments, the money is going to those areas which are most in need of its firepower. That is at the lower end of the income distribution, social housing and moving all the way through to making cost rental mainstream. I am a big fan of cost rental and making that a mainstream tenure so that we have alternative rental options that go all the way up the income distribution line.

First, thanks so much to the witnesses for coming into the committee this evening. For me, reading the opening statements has been a real eye-opener. They create a worry for the future of our children and our society. My first question is for the CSO. The data shows population growth driven mainly by migration, not births, with natural increases turning negative in the 2040s. What are the key implications of that and what should we be working on now in terms of infrastructure? What can this committee, the Government, Senators and TDs do? In the context of planning for health and housing infrastructure over the next 20 to 30 years, the CSO shows a clear shift upwards in our older population and a smaller child share. Can the witnesses spell out to the committee what that will mean? We might understand that as a committee but people watching at home might not understand it.

In its opening statement the CSO talked about growth in the mid-east, with the fastest growth in Dublin and less growth in the regional and Border areas. As a Senator I do a lot of work with people who unfortunately have had to come this country because they are refugees and so on and, for me, this is feeding into the divide and conquer narrative. I am really disappointed in that. I would like the witnesses to explain what they mean regarding migration and how it has a negative impact. That is how the statement reads to me - that migration is a bad thing. That is what I am getting from it.

My next question is for the ESRI. Its research highlights the economic vulnerability of lone parent families and the continued inequality of disabled people, Travellers and Roma. How should NDP investment in housing, transport and childcare be reshaped if the Government is serious about reducing these persistent inequalities? I am very aware that the ESRI says it is independent but it gets a lot of money from the Government. In that context, how can it be independent? The ESRI is here today to talk about the NDP. The Civil Engagement Group in the Seanad, of which I am a part, tabled over 100 amendments to the Planning and Development Bill in June 2024 which was rushed through the Seanad in only two days. The ESRI's statement seems to suggest that is good legislation. If the ESRI could change any of it, what would it change? We submitted approximately 107 amendments to meet the needs of the most vulnerable groups in society. Many were designed to meet the needs of people with disabilities, who also matter in the context of the housing crisis going forward.

I would like to know more about how the ESRI can claim to be an independent body when it gets so much funding from the Government. Why did not it speak out when the Planning and Development Bill, one of the biggest pieces of legislation to ever go through the Houses, was being debated? I find that absolutely mind-blowing. The ESRI claims to be independent but did not speak up for the most vulnerable groups in society. I would like to know more about that. I have some other questions about housing but I will leave them for now because the questions I have just asked are very important.

I thank the Senator for her questions. From a CSO perspective, we are an independent organisation. We are independent of Government and we do not comment on any policy so, unfortunately, I will not be able to answer a lot of the questions the Senator asked. She asked how we can address the decline in the natural increase. To go back to a point made earlier, we do the population projections and publish them. The onus is on us to communicate them as far and wide as possible and we are striving, in the CSO, to maximise our audience reach beyond the expert users like the ESRI. We are increasingly using infographics, visualisations and heat maps to highlight the work we do. We are working with schools and the education sector and we are trying to get into the mainstream media and out to the general public. In terms of the role of the CSO, it is really about providing policymakers with the information and evidence for whatever policy actions they-----

I am really aware of the work of the CSO and it is very positive in terms of providing data for our daily work. However, this divide and conquer narrative is killing me. It feels like we are blaming migrants for the housing and health crises.

We produce a lot of our statistics broken down by nationality and we produce them in a completely independent and objective manner. The statistics are out there to inform the debate and address certain myths. We publish a lot of data in a very independent, impartial and objective manner.

I would like to see some of those myths being addressed and the divide and conquer narratives that we see and hear all of the time. I am not saying that is what the CSO is doing but I just cannot get my head around this. We have organisations like the CSO coming in and talking about population increases when the real issues are the numbers who are homeless, for example. How many migrants are homeless? How many Traveller children are homeless? How many people are living in poverty? How can we fix that going forward, through infrastructure? Do the witnesses understand what I mean? Why are we not focusing on these issues rather than that one subject of migration? It is really important that we talk about this. I am not 100% happy with his answer but I thank Mr. McMahon.

One thing I would add in terms of the production of migration statistics is that it is something we are obliged to do under EU regulations. In terms of our population projections, we produce them with the assistance of a wide expert group representing a wide variety of stakeholders. We also carry out our analysis in line with international standards and best practices. We do not employ a tone that is either positive or negative. We employ a neutral tone in all of our communications.

We try to add as much insight to the data as possible through the linkage across various statistical and administrative sources, to try to provide as much information as possible in a very balanced and objective manner.

I will pick up on the Senator's questions to the CSO on the impact and importance of migration in some of the discussion we have had. It is true that our opening statement probably makes it seem like the great increase in population, a lot of which is coming from migration, is a big challenge for the economy and the country. I probably should have made it more clear that is has also been of great benefit to the country. A lot of the growth of the last 20 years has come from migrants. The vast majority of migrants of course are working and contributing enormously to the economy. They have a much higher employment rate, in fact, than Irish people of the same age group.

The Senator is correct on the misperceptions element, that people sometimes think when you talk about migration you are just talking about migrants being a drain. We did some very recent work on this. There is a migration and inclusion unit in the ESRI; however, because we are all focused on infrastructure, I am afraid we do not have any of that group here today. Just a few weeks ago, that unit looked at what people's perceptions of migration were and how that impacted their attitudes towards migration. The more people got wrong in terms of what they thought was the stereotypical education background, nationality and work experience of migrants, the more likely they were to have negative perceptions of migration. They were often quite wrong in their perceptions, when we lined up the survey results to the CSO's data. It is very much a case that greater education and awareness of the range of migrant backgrounds and the contributions migrants make are probably quite important. I will send on some of that research to the Senator because it may be useful.

We have been very focused here on physical infrastructure because we are focusing on the output of the national development plan. When we talked about housing, Dr. O'Toole mentioned the number of units but obviously the same type of housing unit is not suitable for every type of household. There has been a lot of work done in the ESRI in particular on the different housing needs of people with disabilities and the extra costs a household that has a disabled member will experience. We did not make it much of a focus of today's opening statement on the national development plan. However, looking at the experiences of lone parents and people with disabilities has been a really big feature of our work.

I may come across a little bit innocent when I am talking about migrants, people with disabilities and Traveller people. Infrastructure is not just bricks and mortar. Infrastructure needs to be there for the people. That is my role on this committee, and I think it is really important because we forget too often the people we are going to be putting into the houses, the people who are going to be working in the firms that we build and so on. We have to have people at the heart of this conversation.

That links to the previous Deputy's questions. There is a very human element to this. Infrastructure needs to be designed for the people who are using it. A lot of the demands we are talking about, particularly in the healthcare and education systems, require investment in the workers who are going to do that as well.

On the Senator's final question about independence, it is true we get a lot of funding from the State, some of it as a direct grant from the Department of public expenditure, as well as from a number of bilateral research programmes supported by different Departments, agencies outside the Government and competitive grants with European institutions that fund research across academic and public policy debates. We make a very strong point that every piece of research we do is published and our research is always highly quality-controlled. We put as much information and evidence into the policy sphere as we can and that is in no way compromised or impacted by the funding arrangement. When we provide that evidence, we are putting it out to the policymakers. We do not make active policy recommendations. We provide the evidence. The policymakers - elected representatives - are there to weigh it up against other considerations, weigh up different pieces of evidence and take that into the actual policy decision.

I will ask a few questions. The first one or two are for the CSO. Could we have a few words about its linkage and relationships with other EU and UK equivalent bodies? Are there similar standards and approaches across Europe or do different countries have different approaches to collecting figures? Is there an agreed template? For the people listening, could we also go through, in baby steps, the difference between forecasts and projections? I get the difference but I think 90% of people think they are the same. It will help people who are watching. People use the words interchangeably but they are not the same. I ask the CSO to that out in baby steps so everyone gets a clear picture?

I will take the first one and I will let Mr. Linehan explain the difference. There is a very harmonised approach across the EU to the compilation of statistics. There are EU regulations governing the production and compilation of all official statistics, effectively, covering population, demography, economy, environment and society. They are very strictly regulated and very closely harmonised. That applies to the area of population, population projections and the requirements to produce quarterly, annual and decennial detailed population requirements. Although the UK is out of the EU, we have very close bilateral relations with the Office for National Statistics in the UK and also the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, NISRA. We recently published a joint report with NISRA on its 2021 census and our 2022 census. That followed on from a similar exercise after the 2011 census. We have very regular interactions on the population and demography front.

How we would describe it, and obviously we are aware of our colleagues in the ESRI as well, is that with a forecast you are assigning quite a high probability to the event happening. A weather forecast is saying that in the next 12 hours there will be rain over parts of the country, for example. You are looking at a particular scenario but you are assigning a high degree of probability to it. It might not be 100% but you are saying you are fairly sure.

With our projections, we take three different scenarios. Taking migration as an example, we do not know what will happen with migration within the next two to three years, considering what happened with Ukraine and Covid, let alone what could happen in the next five to ten years. What we do then is assign a range of scenarios. We will ask what happens if it goes low and then set out what will happen. We ask what happens if it goes to a medium level and then what happens if it goes to a high level. What we do then, when choosing those, is we take our expert group - we are honoured to say we have ESRI participation in that group as well - but we also take the data we have. We do not just pick three random scenarios. We ask, based on today's numbers, what could happen. We pick stuff that is plausible. The difference really is that with a forecast, you are saying with a very high degree of probability that you think this is going to happen, whereas what we are saying is that, if we take the following things, this could happen, this could happen or this could happen. We do not pick a favourite, either.

Mr. Linehan made a good comparison using weather forecasts for people watching. With weather forecasts, there is good information to predict what will happen. However, with projections there are assumptions, and it depends on which ones are made.

There are.

I get that.

I want to ask a question about spoken languages. What is the percentage for the first language in Ireland? If the witnesses do not have it with them, they might send it on. When I look at reports, I am always intrigued by the number of people who profess to be great Irish speakers. There is some exaggeration once people can speak two sentences. I am curious about this. The first language of members of a new community in Ireland is the language of their country of origin. In many places, there are as many speaking the language of their country of origin as there are speaking Irish or English, yet the statistics, if you believe them, show a high proportion of people in the country are fluent in Irish. Is there any information on this? If not, it can be sent to us. The question is probably catching the witnesses a little off guard. They can come back to me on it.

Yes.

I have a few more questions.

The ESRI made a comment about the older population and stated that, with a higher percentage of the population over 65 not working, they will have to be supported by the younger population. The ESRI might have factored in, but certainly did not mention, the issue of pensions. The next generation will have more pensions, both private and public, than the previous generation. I realise that we can say that people have contributed to their public sector pensions. Could we be given some information on this? It is very easy to say older people are going to have to be supported much more by the working population. It is obviously true, but if the witnesses do not have information on it to hand, maybe they could send it to me. Is an increase in pension provision accounted for in the ESRI's work? The witnesses can come back to us with specifics on it. I am picking Ms Lawless up on the one word she mentioned because some of us on the wrong side of 60 might not like to be pigeonholed as comprising a burden on society.

I have certainly said that the choice of 65 as a cut-off point is an historical one. There has been a fairly considerable increase in the number of people continuing to work beyond 65. If we say the working age population consists of people between 15 and 64, we should note that very few 15-year-olds are working nowadays. Therefore, there is a little bit of an historical anomaly in the choice of that age range when it does not align-----

I do not have a problem with the age range at all. Rather, I am referring to the issue of pensions. Is this factored in? Do the witnesses know where I am coming from? If older people are to have more pensions in the next ten or 20 years than older people did in the previous 20 years, it is a mitigating factor. Their own pensions will be providing some support.

In most other projections, we have largely assumed that the current State pension will continue and grow in line with prices.

How about the private pensions, which are more common now than a generation ago? That is what I am getting at. Have the private pensions been factored in?

The key thing to think about is not at all that the research or data suggest in any way that older people are any kind of burden. The point we and, I believe, the CSO are trying to make in our population projections is that the age structure is changing. At the moment, around one in seven people is over the age of 65. By 2050, that will be one in four. Therefore, we need to take account of what it will mean for the demand for healthcare services and social care. It might involve a difference in the composition of housing demand and so on. In the kind of work we have done, we examined some of the fiscal pressures. This relates to the pension issue the Cathaoirleach raised. As the share of older people rises, the burden or the Government expenditure on pensions increases. We have not taken account of the private aspect. We do not project on the basis of private pensions.

There is therefore a gap in the ESRI's information overall.

In any private hospital in Dublin, there will be older people with private health insurance. It is the most important asset to have. There are more people on private insurance than a generation ago and they are getting good health services, but this is not at a cost to the State because they are paying their premiums. Historically, the pension was the way in which older people had to be looked after. I do not want to use the word "burden". Many of the generation in question, because of improved economic activity over their generation, are a little better able to provide for themselves in old age. For one, they tend not to have the same housing burden, because they are housed. Second, they have pensions in some cases. Third, they have private health insurance. That is just my view. The witnesses might come back to me with their thoughts on this. They might not have any statistics on it yet, but they will know where I am coming from.

I am not sure we have statistics.

Why not?

We have largely focused on the-----

I would have expected the organisation to have had the statistics, although I do not expect the witnesses to have them today because the issue just came to my mind as we were talking and listening carefully.

On housing, it is true that the current pensioners and the people who may be retiring in the next ten to 15 years have a quite high rate of home ownership. One thing we have considered, which is a concern for further into the future, is the fall-off in home ownership and what it might mean. Many pension systems are predicated a little on the idea that people's costs go down in retirement because their mortgages are paid off. If, maybe 20 or 30 years into the future, a lower rate of home ownership features higher up the age distribution, it could shift the balance regarding private pensions. Dr. O’Toole might want to pick up on that.

I might just add to that. A number of years ago, we worked with the Pensions Council on this specifically and tried to simulate how many more renters we would have in the future and what would happen to them if, instead of paying off their mortgages on retirement and thereby reducing their costs in line with their incomes, they had a housing cost as their income fell in retirement. We considered whether it would increase the risk of poverty among the group. I am happy to share that research with the Deputy.

That is good. Dr. O'Toole can see where I am coming from.

I have a few more questions. Public transport and infrastructure were mentioned. Could we be sent a comparison of current and previous car dependency rates with those of other countries? We know the result of better public transport. We have been seeing great improvements with Local Link and Townlink in every county around the country, just in the past couple of years. Is car ownership going up or down? At one time, there was one car per household, but now there may be three. The witnesses know what I am getting at. The car dependency rate has a big impact on public transport, and this relates to one of the vital pieces of infrastructure we have to deal with. If the witnesses have some information on this, could they please give it? Since they will not have it to hand, they may come back to me with it.

The census collects data on car ownership. There is a huge amount of information from the household level. On the Cathaoirleach's question on the language spoken in households, the information is also contained in the census data. We can send the committee the results.

I will not have expected the witnesses to have covered everything here today. I am always intrigued by something that is taken as a fact in Ireland. I am referring to the question of housing supply versus price. It is said that when there is a shortage of houses, the price goes up. We would think that is simple logic, but the one thing I know for a fact and that is never referred to is that during the financial boom, the more house prices went up, the more houses were built. I believe we have an inverse understanding of the market. Logic dictates one thing but what happened in practice was such that when people saw houses being built, everyone wanted to have one and to cover themselves.

The more prices went up, the more were built because they were more profitable. That does not fit into the scenario that was referred to in passing about house prices and supply. Is there any truth in that, because evidence in Ireland says the opposite? We were building more supply at the periods of the highest prices. Maybe supply goes down when price goes down. I think it is a direct correlation and not an inverse relationship.

In the particular instance of Ireland during that housing boom, the critical third factor was the massive increase in credit and the ability for households to borrow greater and greater multiples of their incomes and to put down lower deposits. That huge influx of credit into the market at very low rates shifted the normal economic relationship between supply and demand.

There could be another twist again in 20 years, is what I am saying. The amount of credit came into play, but in 20 years' time, somebody could be saying there was a different factor that never happened before. I am saying it is not as simple as we all seem to think in terms of supply and demand.

I have a general question. What percentage of homes would not fill in the census form? There has to be a percentage of people who just do not want to do it, end of. What is the gut feeling of the percentage?

With the last census, it was approximately 3% or 4% but we have auxiliary data from administrative data sources.

Is that the norm across Europe or is it high?

It is the norm among countries that conduct a traditional census. It is there or thereabouts.

Does our census collect information on - I am not sure how to describe this - first-generation births in Ireland. There is some reference to citizens being born versus people who come into the country. Where I live in Portlaoise, we have a phenomenal number of people who came previously and now their children are being born here. They are Irish citizens. They are born here, but they were not born to people who were Irish citizens in the first place. The witnesses know the group I am getting at. There is quite a proportion of that.

It ties in with Mr. McMahon's earlier point, which we are doing a lot of work on, namely, linkage of data. What we have been doing recently is a lot of linking of our birth and death data with other data sources. With the birth data, for example, you have information on the parents. You can then carry out linkages and studies to see the patterns. It is slightly different, but it illustrates what can be done. This ties in with the Senator's earlier point. We recently did a detailed study on administrative data factors linking to deaths to see the link between ethnicity and causes of death, for example. With the data linkage we have built, we have been able to further establish these things.

Some of what the Cathaoirleach seeks is similar to what is being sought under the upcoming European regulation on population. There is a lot of information in birth and death statistics, including the country of birth and the nationality of parents. Since the CSO and the public sector in general have been working on the national data infrastructure, particularly with the idea of linking across the PPS numbers, or PPSNs, we are now in a position where we can do further examination of a lot more of these topics. It ties in with the General Register Office, GRO, which produces the birth and death data and captures a lot of information.

Does it capture national information?

Nationality of parents is already captured. There is also detailed information in the census on that. It is something where we capture and produce a lot already, but it also something we wish to do further exploration and analysis on.

When is the census? What is the census weekend this time?

The next census is 9 May 2027.

Is there any census this year?

The most recent census was in 2022. They are generally at five-year intervals.

Another thing that comes up a lot is housing. Will the witnesses tell me about the trends for the occupancy rate per house? They might have to send me something on this. There are a lot of houses with one, two or three occupants. However, if you step back two generations, I am sure it was five, six and seven. It is not just a question of population. We talk about how the increase in population will lead to the need for more houses, but nearly as significant is the fact that the occupancy rate per house is dropping dramatically compared with two generations ago. Families were bigger. There are two or three generations in some houses now. Can the witnesses show us something on occupancy rate over a period? That is more important. If you have 5 million people in a country and the occupancy rate is five, that is 1 million houses, but if the occupancy rate is three, that is a hell of a different figure.

There is detailed data on the occupancy rates in the census housing report. It was falling until 2011 when there was a slight increase in the average household size.

It is something we will have to produce on an annual basis for the upcoming European statistics on population. Household size will be an annual thing, so we have developed an administrative population estimate system called Irish population estimates from administrative data sources, IPEADS. It is experimental but is on its fourth round. That includes household and family statistics on an annual basis. This information is important. We can do it at every census, but we now have a means to produce this on an annual basis.

I presume there are records. I am looking for the national figures for house occupancy five, ten and 20 years ago. That is a significant issue.

Of course.

There are lots of houses with one or two people.

The most recent 2022 census shows the average number in a household is approximately 2.8. The various censuses going back will give what it had been. The Cathaoirleach is correct. Family sizes are smaller now than they have been in the past. As our colleagues from the CSO outlined at the beginning, the fertility rate in Ireland has been coming down since the 1970s. Household sizes are smaller. The most recent 2022 census has it at approximately 2.8. You can argue that is artificially high. We know there are younger people who are still living at home with their parents who would ideally be setting up their own separate and independent households. It is great to hear that the CSO will be producing that data on an annual or more regular basis because it is one of the key metrics to take account of.

When we did housing demand projections and so on, we looked at and drew on research done by our colleagues to try to get a sense of how much this could fall over time or how patterns in household formation might impact our projections. When we were doing our projections, we linked in with that other research.

Have any of the organisations had any role in the development of the recent national development plan? They are obviously the powerhouses of information. Was it taken from them by the Department of public expenditure and reform or whoever was producing it? What role did they play? We are all trying to project the needs of the future. I presume that the witnesses, who have accurate information and good ways to estimate into the future, had an input. Were they involved in the process?

The ESRI published an interim review in 2024, which looked at the range of demands across health, housing, transport and climate and fed into the review of the national development plan.

The ESRI was not involved in the development of the plan. However, we published a report 18 months or two years ago. The Department of public expenditure and reform asked us to look at the various sections before the mid-stage review was done. There are chapters in that report that looked at what was going on in housing. It was more to get an input from the ESRI on if there was any refocusing of the timing of investment, given the state of the economy. A big message from that report was that the economy was at full employment. There is lots of capital investment expenditure planned across housing, transport and energy, but we do not have the workforce to deliver all of that.

As Dr. Lawless said during her opening remarks, if we start pouring all of that capital investment into the economy, we risk running up inflation, so there was the issue of trying to have balance. Obviously, things are all urgent today but we do not want to waste money needlessly by driving inflation. That was our input into the review process. The ESRI is not involved in any way in individual projects or that kind of thing.

The ESRI is just feeding in macro information. Does the CSO want to come in?

From a CSO perspective, far as I am aware, we did not have huge involvement but I suspect-----

The Department had its information.

-----the census would have played a huge role. Potentially the population projections as well, although there were other projections.

There are multiple agencies involved in projections. There are our colleagues in the ESRI and there is also the Department of Finance. One thing more generally that we are taking very seriously is the idea of the annual population projections. Given the fast-changing nature of Irish society and of demographic trends, the idea is to move into a position where we would be able to provide information on an annual basis to help to facilitate policymakers with projections more rapidly.

This committee deals with infrastructure and we talked about a lot of people coming in, working in Ireland and helping with various construction projects. A lot of Irish contractors have big projects abroad and there are people leaving Ireland every week to work in England or on the Continent. Do we have any idea of how many construction workers are doing this? This is a very important question. There will be pressure to get everything in the national development plan done, but the next question will be whether we have the workforce to do it or whether we will have to bring in a workforce from other countries to help us deliver the plan. At the same time, there are a lot of Irish workers abroad. Do we have any information on that issue? There is a bit of a mismatch in where we are. There might even be Irish companies with projects in London or Germany that will be bidding for projects here and bringing in workers the other way around. Who can comment on that? Where can we get a fix on the numbers of Irish people who go abroad to work that we could do with having here?

This ties in with the proposed developments for immigration and emigration statistics, in that we are required in future to produce far more detail for the EU. That has led to the situation where we have had to develop administrative database methods. This means that one of the things we will potentially have is more information on nationality and occupation, for example. Occupation would be of interest. Our basic principle for working out if someone has left the country would be if they have shown activity during the past 12 months. If they have not, they would be considered to have emigrated. This is experimental and in its early stages but it is something we have to develop. The idea is that, from that data, it would be possible to do an analysis of types of information, for example, on nationality. It is at an early stage, but this is the concept we are using. The belief is that while we currently do not have this information, by going with this approach we would be in a position to provide further information on such questions.

Does Mr. Linehan not see how critical it is? The money is set aside for the national development plan and the only issue will be the ability to deliver it if there are a lot of Irish workers going abroad. It is not the CSO's job to figure out how we can incentivise Irish workers to stay here, but it would be nice to know what the balance is if we are incentivising people to come to work in Ireland at the same time that Irish workers are going abroad.

We know the number of Irish nationals who are emigrating, for example.

They might not be emigrating. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about people who work abroad on a weekly basis and come back every second weekend. I am talking about Irish people who are domiciled here and come home at the weekend but who head off come Sunday night or Monday morning.

That is something we have looked into. We did a release last year examining short-term migration patterns. Rather than people who have emigrated, we were examining people who had left the country for a six-month period rather than a 12-month period. We have done this for both immigration and emigration. That is more to capture the seasonal or cyclical workers, for example, in terms of emigration and immigration. That is an example of what they call irregular or different migration patterns. That is something we have put work into and are continuing to develop.

What does Mr. Linehan call migration? I do not get this. I am talking about people who spend their working year abroad but are home umpteen times in the meantime. They will not show up in CSO statistics because, as far as it knows, they could just have been gone to a match for the weekend. There are definitely Irish workers who are going abroad, working on projects in other countries on an ongoing basis and coming home regularly. There is a leakage of Irish workers to abroad. Is anyone able to capture any of that because that is very relevant. There is the national development plan, which is what we are talking about here, and this committee is charged with the issue of delivery. The plan is great but if it is not delivered, it is useless. Delivery depends on the workforce. Maybe the Department of public expenditure or somebody else should get a handle on how many capable workers are leaving the country regularly and earning and spending their money abroad. It is fine that they are coming back home, but we have a concern about how there are so many big projects abroad. For example, there will be contracts to rebuild Ukraine for years to come. Why would Irish workers not want to get some of that without having to emigrate? Do the witnesses get what I am getting at? They might not have any information on it, but can they comment on it? If not, I suggest this committee might have to think about this topic because the availability of a workforce is a constraint on delivering the national development plan.

The Chair is absolutely right that there are very severe constraints, in particular in the construction sector. Dr. Curtis spoke about how the economy was at or close to full employment. We say that is an unemployment rate at or around 5%. We can fight over that number, but it is at or around 5%. One of the things we can do with CSO data is ask what the unemployment rate is for people who, when they were last working, were in the construction sector. It is much lower. The last time I saw the figure, it was something like 3% or 3.5%. Someone from the CSO might be able to correct me on that but I know the figure is a lot lower than the overall aggregate employment rate. What that suggests is that, at present in the country, there is very limited spare capacity or labour coming from that sector that could come back into it to work.

Yes, but I am not talking about people coming back into work. I am talking about people who are living here and going to work on projects abroad. Maybe I am not explaining it correctly.

We do not capture as much data on emigrants when people leave.

These people are not emigrants. They live here.

May I make a quick point?

I am talking about people who live here and are home every second weekend but are working in Warsaw or somewhere else for the other 12 days. These are construction workers we could use. We need a workforce to deliver the national development plan but there is leakage from Ireland.

You might be able to capture them in surveys done in other countries, for example, the labour force survey in Poland or somewhere else, when you look at the nationality of workers to see what proportion of workers in that country's construction sector are from Ireland.

Okay. I have probably thrown the witnesses. There is probably no reason to capture this data, but as Chairman of this committee, I see it as a real issue if we do not have the workforce to deliver the plan. Costs will escalate if we need skilled workers and there is a shortage. We all know that would affect wages, costs and capability. Maybe it is not something that has arisen much in the past. I will keep stressing that I am not talking about emigrants at all. Rather, I am talking about people who go to England to work every week and come back at the weekend. Their productive working times are lost to us while they are abroad, although we might have their income.

In terms of the CSO labour market statistics, we are increasingly using the Revenue Commissioners' employee tax data. We can potentially see if someone was working in the construction sector last year and now they are not paying tax any more. In terms of signs of life, it is probably safe to say that they have left Ireland. It is an indicator of job churn. We can see-----

I am talking about the guy who is still here and will have income to declare, as he is resident and domiciled in Ireland. It is just that his 40-hour working week is somewhere else.

Tell me if I am wrong and the Revenue might not be able to capture that. He is domiciled here. He is probably paying his tax and has to balance his tax between what is deducted in England versus what he is paying here.

There is one thing about this regarding the analysis of employment and activity. When analysing the administrative data, we use up to 17 different data sets to work this out for people. For example, in the scenario we are talking about, if somebody is working abroad and they may not be paying tax in this country but they say that they are still returning to the country at weekends, by analysing administrative data we could look and see that the person is not showing up in the tax system. On the other hand, let us say that the family are showing up in education or in the health system interactions, General Medical Services, GMS, or other schemes. In those cases, it may be possible to carry out analysis on that. To follow up from our colleagues in the ESRI, it is one of the more complex problems. In effect, we are talking about a case where people are in the country for some intents and purposes and for other intents and purposes they are not in the country. It may be possible to identify certain scenarios, for example, where a person is working for a non-Irish firm by analysing across data sets. As the Chair pointed out, where it will get tricky would be the case if we have an Irish firm sending Irish people abroad-----

I bet they have a company domiciled registered in the country where the project is.

It would depend on how the tax treatment is done in that case.

That is something that we will take up with the Revenue. We will ask in a letter if it has any information of people who are paying the tax here, but they know from the employer's registration number or something that it is not an Irish company. Mr. Linehan gets where I am coming from. It is one of the things that we have to watch. There are workers abroad, but we need them all here for the next couple of years on the national development plan. There seems to be a bit of a lacuna of information on-----

It is maybe something that would need the joining together of labour market and firm data. Something like the services export data will tell us about how many Irish construction firms are selling services abroad, but it will not tell us that if they are selling those services abroad by having an architect do something in the Dublin office or by sending a person abroad to the project. There is a bit of a gap there in what we can tell from the labour market data versus from the firm trade data.

I get where we are at. At this side of table, we will do a bit of thinking on this issue. We might have to touch base with the witnesses for comments. The Revenue will have a role in this. We will take that away from this meeting to try to get something on it. We need as many Irish workers and other workers in Ireland as much as possible.

I thank all the witnesses. It was fascinating and the statistics were quite alarming. It is very welcome because we cannot argue with facts. I love facts and figure because once we have the statistics in front of us, there can be all sorts of arguments online with people saying one thing or another, but we cannot argue with the statistics that we have. Are the statistics possibly underestimated? I have seen some studies. Regarding the inward migration contributing to population increase, we are way ahead of our European counterparts. I have seen one figure that said as high as 83% of the population increase could be attributed to inward migration. I ask the witnesses to clarify that.

It was mentioned that the population has increased in Europe by 4% in terms of migration and Ireland was under one third. We are talking about over 30%. We are talking about eight-fold. In the context of service and infrastructure provision, is it sustainable to have such a rapid increase in inward migration in such a short space of time? Mr. McMahon mentioned the fertility rate and the population, with Ireland's fertility rate having fallen from 1.9 down to 1.5. He said the replacement rate would normally be 2.1 in any population. Is this sustainable in the long term? It would certainly be abnormal, in terms of inter-European comparisons with other countries and that sort of demographic, to have such a distribution.

On incentivising workers to come home, should there be Government policies to incentivise Irish citizens to have larger families? The witnesses have said that there is a huge demographic challenge. We do not have the population. The population is rapidly plummeting. A lot of people cannot afford to have a family. Some people are telling me that they cannot even afford to have one child. We obviously need far more incentives. That is not sustainable long-term. Should we be incentivising that? I have quite a lot of questions. In the witnesses' projections, they said that with the population increase that possibly 1.17 million were born abroad. It is about 20% of the population. Is that possibly an underestimation? I have seen some figures that say it could be as high as 24%. How does it compare with other European countries?

Regarding student accommodation, I am on the student committee here. We have been talking a lot about student accommodation. I love meeting foreign students. They contribute greatly to the country. Is the rate sustainable, however? Our rate of student intake is twice the European average. It is as high as 44,000 at the moment. Student accommodation is a huge issue. We visited one house where there were 18 people living in one small two-bedroom apartment. It is crazy. We can see how people are profiteering off this. For example, somebody next door is renting out a house and through greed the person is obviously going to go for the house where there are 18 people living. We do not want to be inviting in people to live in those circumstances.

We asked the Minister, Deputy Lawless, about the figures for the international student population coming into Ireland and the increase over the coming decade. We are double the European rate at present. The Government plan is to bring in an extra 10%. Is this a wise policy? Is it sustainable if we cannot accommodate the existing numbers and they are living in squalor in many cases? I have met many of them who are living in squalor. Is it sustainable to be trying to increase the percentage by 10%? One of the reasons is that universities are starved of funding. They are bringing in a lot of foreign students. In one of the medical colleges, 51% of the students are foreign-born. As the Cathaoirleach pointed out, in many ways, we have a lot of doctors and nurses who are emigrating because they cannot live here. Surely it begs the following question: should we not be incentivising all those nurses who are protesting in Sydney to come home to work here to fill the gaps in the labour market? We could talk all night on this. Do we need to have a proper national conversation on this in terms of sustainability and rates and levels of population increase and demographics? It is probably an elephant in the room that we have not really spoken of to date. That may be part of the problem.

I will take the discussion on estimation and underestimation for starters. When we do our population and migration estimates, we use a combination of sources. The Deputy mentioned the labour force survey for emigration and immigration, but we also benchmark it with administrative data, as well as information on communal establishments, arrivals from Ukraine and other sources. We combine and cross-check across multiple sources. The other thing we have done is when we brought in our new administrative method for examining immigrants' interactions with the State, we have been able to get a number from that as well. By cross-checking across those numbers, for example, if we take a 12-month definition, our numbers tally with a 12-month definition. We have very high confidence in those numbers. What is interesting is that we have also published the question that I mentioned earlier of shorter-term migration. For example, people coming for six months rather than 12 months. When we published those numbers, we got higher numbers as well.

It can depend on the definition for how long does a person come into the country. We use the standard international definition which is 12 months. We are very happy with the numbers we produce for the 12-month estimates.

It is about 20%.

We are particularly interested in the short-term numbers. We already carried out research on it and published a frontier or experimental release. It is something we continue to be interested in. We have also published releases on questions around daily expense allowance recipients, which is a significant subset of the international protection cohort. We publish quite a lot of statistics on these groups. With the 12-month numbers we can benchmark with the census and other sources. We are confident in those numbers.

Are there a lot of people who do not fill out the census, particularly if they are foreign-born?

They still interact with the State. We also use interactions with the State and other sources. One reason to address this is we are rolling out the IPEADS or the annual administrative population estimates which combine 20 sources. That has been published four times. We are now producing a harmonised series from 2020 to 2023 that will provide a detailed additional source based on administrative activity for examination. That will include very detailed nationality statistics.

Is the rate of increase over a short period sustainable?

On the sustainability question, when it comes to looking at the population growth and the economy, there is almost a chicken and egg situation. A lot of the population growth contributes very strongly to activity within the economy and the country. At the same time, it puts demand on services. It is difficult to see how to stop the pressure on services without also putting constraints on - a lot of people coming into Ireland work in incredibly important jobs that would otherwise be difficult to fill. A large percentage of migrants to Ireland work in the health service, which would otherwise find it difficult to fill those positions. The very fast rate of growth in the Irish population over the past 20 years - it is a slightly flippant analogy - is like when your child has a growth spurt. It is a positive thing and you are really proud of them but their clothes do not fit any more. The infrastructure and capital investment has not kept up. One reason this is a big issue right now is that in the aftermath of the financial crisis essentially all Government investment in capital spending was halted for close to ten years. If the capital investment had continued to grow in line with the population through that time, this big gap in infrastructure we are now struggling to close would not have emerged. All of the advice from the ESRI and other economic agencies, the Central Bank and the fiscal advisory council is that while there is a big gap now, the important thing in terms of infrastructure and capital investment is to gradually keep pace. While the overall size of the population of Ireland has grown much faster in comparison with the rest of Europe in the past 20 years, and that has put big infrastructural gaps at the top of the agenda, we are still one of the countries with the lowest population density. It is not the case there is not space for this infrastructure to be built, it is just a case of how, where and how quickly we can close that gap.

Would it not make more sense to keep the doctors and nurses here if we need more of them and bring back all the nurses protesting outside Sydney Opera House with a banner saying, "Give us a reason to come home"? Would that not make more sense than private contractors bringing in nurses and doctors from everywhere in the world, possibly at exploitative rates? Would it not make more sense for the country's population to take that approach? I am on the student committee. Is it wise to look for a 10% increase if we are already double the European rate? Do the witnesses have an opinion on that?

On medical workers going abroad, it is not so much that a specific policy is needed to attract any individual group of workers back. A fundamental reason they left is the cost and availability of housing. Successful delivery of the overall national development plan and addressing in particular constraints in housing would be a big element of that. It is important in terms of the specific student accommodation. That is a type of accommodation that could be expanded rapidly at the universities to be bespoke accommodation. It is often accommodation that is temporary and short term so the standards do not need to be quite as high-spec. At the moment, rather than being in dedicated student accommodation, students are living in family homes around the city and therefore putting pressure on other elements. There are no quick wins in infrastructure spending but in student accommodation you could get a lot of traction quickly. It shows there are competing priorities. The universities are under considerable pressure to be more self-financing, with limits on what they can charge.

They are not funded properly.

It is non-EU students in particular. I believe EU students are charged the same as Irish students.

They pay astronomical fees.

They are very much incentivised to maximise the number of non-EU students. There are competing priorities from difference branches.

The nub of what we are saying is we do not have the people to do the things that need to be done. It was pointed out that Ireland's fertility rate has fallen from 1.9 down to 1.5, which is way below replacement level of 2.1. Should we incentivise? Some countries have family-friendly incentives so people can have a family. We need the workers of the future.

As the CSO pointed out, the fertility rate in Ireland is down at around 1.5. That is above the EU average, which is around 1.38. We see differences across countries. A range of social and economic factors go into that. There is very little research on fertility in Ireland. In general over the past number of decades women have had higher levels of education and are more likely to participate in the labour market and the age at which women have their first child has been slowly increasing over time. To some extent that is the natural outcome of a range of social and economic forces. Having said that, there are definitely constraints. I would imagine the most prominent is access to childcare and affordable childcare. It is a big constraint in women's choices around family numbers and so on. In some ways it is not as simple as offering an incentive; it is to understand why these have patterns emerged. We would need to have a much better understanding of that which at present I do not think we have.

The ESRI's area is projections and figures. When children who are in secondary school now reach pension age in 50 years it will be 2076. What do the witnesses predict the demographics of Ireland will be then? I am sure the ESRI is thinking that far ahead.

We go as far as 2050 and by that point you can see the ageing of the population. I think the CSO goes slightly further out.

We go as far as 2057. We do not go beyond that for the moment. There are some international projections that go to 2100. It is impossible to tell migration trends over that period but there is a question on what happens to fertility over that period.

For example, regarding the projections, we examined the scenario where fertility would taper downwards from 1.5 to 1.3 by 2057 - before then, it kind of tapers along. One thing to note is that we take a shorter timeframe to 2042 in our regional projections, and there is variation across the regions. There is a lower fertility rate in Dublin, for example, where the rate starts at 1.3 and goes down.

Based on the work of the actuarial sub-group that worked with us on this, there is a general belief that there will be an improvement in mortality or, in other words, that people will be living longer. I do not want to go beyond 2057. We generally expect that, given the trends, this will be an older world, as we can see from the expected proportion of the zero-14 cohort. I know there was a discussion as to whether we pick 65 or 75 as the cut-off. If we take the higher age cohort, that is the position.

What percentage of Ireland will be Irish-born by 2057? Is there an estimate for that? We get all of these discussions online, but we cannot argue with the facts and figures. The witnesses are the experts in this area. It might be something they would have a rough estimate of.

It is not something that would be easy to project. If we think about it, a lot of younger Irish people will emigrate and return. It is difficult to try to put a path on that. The share of the foreign-born population has been increasing over time, and they then become citizens, so it gets very complicated.

When we talk about immigrants coming into Ireland, some of those would be Irish people who have been abroad for five years and are coming back. We do not have a breakdown of how we would expect that path to evolve.

That would be the same with us. While in our annual numbers we distinguish between returned Irish emigrants and immigrants, when we do the population projections, we do not keep the breakdown. We take the overall immigration and emigration, for example, rather than breaking it down to that level.

Would the witnesses estimate 60%, maybe?

I honestly could not make an estimate. I would not have an answer.

Thank you. We could spend all evening discussing the statistics and projections.

As there are no further questions or final comments, the committee will adjourn until our next meeting on 4 March. With regard to any information that we asked the witnesses to provide, they should try to get it to us within a fortnight.