Central Statistics Office: Their business is the hard facts

The CSO provides data on everything from baby names to shopping habits and economic growth, writes Joe Leogue.

Less than a mile from where thousands of shoppers sift through the sales at Mahon Point Shopping Centre on the outskirts of Cork City, hundreds of workers crunch the numbers on what they are buying, how they are earning it, where they live, and everything in between.

Welcome to the national headquarters of the Central Statistics Office, a complex that opened in 1994, long before the shopping centre, retail park and office developments sprung up in the fields surrounding it.