The Central Statistics Office (CSO) is planning to publish a suite of Brexit-themed data and launch a dedicated Brexit page on its website as part of an initiative to better capture the fallout on Ireland.
The agency has pulled together a raft of social and economic indicators on Ireland's relationship with the UK that will be released next month in the form of a report, entitled Brexit: Ireland and UK in numbers.
Containing 24 tables, the publication includes demographic data as well as figures on migration, foreign direct investment, resident holdings of foreign portfolio securities, trade in services, trade in goods, tourism and transport.
It will be followed up by a more extensive electronic publication, containing all the tables from the report plus more detailed information.
Dedicated page
The third and perhaps most dynamic element of the CSO’s initiative will see the launch of a dedicated page on the agency’s website that will track key indicators.
Similar to the CSO’s existing “key economic indicators” page, the new page will be created using information from the CSO databank and thus will always be up to date. It will go live on the CSO’s website in the spring of 2017.
“We decided to produce the report because we believe it will be valuable for our users to have CSO data which describes our engagement with the UK located in one convenient report,” the CSO’s Helen Cahill said.
“This report will contain data which has already been published by the CSO but will present it in a way that highlights the importance of the UK for people here in Ireland across a range of statistics,” she said.
The fall in the value of sterling against the euro has been blamed for a slowdown in the rate of growth in British tourists visiting the Republic and an increase in the level of cross-Border shopping.
Slowdown
According to the CSO, trips by residents from Britain rose by 9.3 per cent to 1,148,500 between July and September of this year. However, this represented a slowdown on the 14.4 per cent increase recorded in the three months leading up to the UK’s referendum in June.
The Brexit-induced weakness in sterling has also led to a rise in cross-Border shopping, with traffic flows across the Border increasing significantly in recent months.
Retailers here are also worried that more consumers are being attracted online as a result of the currency swing.
