CSO to spend €780k on gift cards for survey participants

The Central Statistics Office is to spend €780,000 on providing incentivised gift cards to people participating in two major surveys it is set to conduct.

The CSO, which has its head office in Cork, is Ireland’s main portal for statutory statistics, such as crime figures, live register numbers, and the population census held every five years.

As part of its preparations for the 2020 Household Budget Survey and the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) pilot survey the statistics office has tendered for the production of 19,500 gift cards as a reward for participants.

The Household Budget Survey will be conducted for 12 months from 2020. Some 18,000 of the gift cards to be produced have been earmarked for this survey, at a cost of €40 each.

Meanwhile, the PIAAC is to be conducted for three months from April of next year, with 1,500 cards produced, evenly split between units priced at €30, €40, and €50.

Each card must be redeemable at a minimum of 3,500 outlets nationwide, and valid in all counties, according to the CSO.

As the tender value has been allocated pre VAT, the overall cost will likely be more than €1 million.

VAT only became chargeable on gift vouchers from January of this year following an EU Council decision on the subject.

The contract is set to last 18 months, with applications closing in early November.

The Household Budget Survey is conducted on a five-yearly basis in order to document household expenditure across the country as a basis to update the weighting of the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

The CPI is one of the key figures used for calculating the rate of inflation or deflation in the economy.

Just under 7,000 households were profiled during the last iteration across the country in 2015.

Typical questions in the survey cover the composition of households, length of tenure, and facilities and appliances contained therein.

The PIAAC survey meanwhile is a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) of cognitive and workplace skills in 24 countries.

The CSO recently revealed that Ireland’s population has reached its highest point in 170 years and could be set to pass the five million mark as early as next year.

The office’s most recent Population and Migration Estimates showed that the population of Ireland has increased by 64,500, bringing the overall total to 4.92 million as of the end of April this year.