Officials wanted CSO to tone down report on ESB data

Department of Housing in Customs House

The Department of Housing wanted to tone down a Central Statistics Office (CSO) analysis which said that ESB connections data overestimated the number of new houses in Ireland.

New emails show that the senior statistician in the department told the CSO that it was important to “continue to stress the importance of the ESB data as the primary source”.

The CSO published new figures on housing completions last month in a bid to ...