their nature, paint a picture of the world at a point in time and with a lag. we could not wait weeks or months to understand pandemic developments in credit and consumer spending behaviour. by the nature of an unfamiliar event such as a pandemic, events move very fast and there were effects that we did not fully understand. we also needed very clear messaging on what was happening underneath the data, how to interpret the data and to communicate findings. serious innovations occurred both in ireland and across many countries. the bank for international settlements established a very useful webpage listing many of these initiatives and played an important role in diffusing the lessons from one country to the next. within the central bank, our head of statistics, rory mcelligott, will detail in his presentation later on some of our innovations, including highfrequency data on payments and credit activity and new partnerships with private tech companies to help understand labour market conditions. these new higher frequency experimental statistics complemented existing datasets and official statistics, allowing us to deliver timely economic assessments for both internal discussions and publications to inform the public. future challenges so, the direction of travel is positive but the challenges ahead remain substantial. one challenge that both our governor and i have outlined in recent months is related to climate change and the challenge of transitioning the economy and society to a low - carbon environment. 2 3 the central bank has been taking steps in this space in recent years and indeed our keynote speaker today discussed climate change and its effects on the irish financial system during his time as governor. 4 this year, the central bank has established a dedicated climate change unit to strategically drive the work that the central bank needs to do to address the challenge of climate change within its mandate. this includes, for example, the need to understand the exposure of our financial system and firms within it to climate change risks, and the need to monitor and assess progress in mobilising finance to sustainable means. reliable data will be required to examine all of these issues and to support our decision - making over the coming years. progress will need to be made swiftly at national and international levels, and we will need to be innovative to gather the data that we need. however, innovation alone will not fill all the gaps. given the global and broad nature of climate change risks, the solutions will be in 2 / 3 bis central bankers'speeches collaboration with others in the public and private sectors, and through sharing experience and skills. many of

sharon donnery : the importance of data - statistics during the pandemic and beyond opening remarks by ms sharon donnery, deputy governor of the central bank of ireland, at the central bank of ireland webinar " the importance of data : statistics during the pandemic and beyond ", 7 october 2021. * * * i would like to welcome everyone this afternoon to our conference on the important role of statistics in economic analysis and policymaking, and what lessons we can take from the pandemic period to support us in our future challenges. evidence - based policymaking is key for the central bank and, of course, high quality data provides the foundation for this approach. in addition, part of our statutory role involves producing high quality financial statistics, both for our own analysis but also as a public good. we disseminate our data and analysis through various publications, seminars and through ongoing interactions with government departments, academia and commentators. it is highly important to us to be a trusted and credible source for our users domestically and further afield. improvements to statistics in recent years one of my very last pre - pandemic speeches was at the sixth household finance and consumption conference in december 2019. 1 my focus then was very much on marking the significant progress made by the statistical community over the previous decade in response to the financial crisis. we saw substantial national and international efforts to build better quality, more comprehensive, flexible and integrated statistics. international cooperation is crucial for further progress including identifying data gaps, building areas of speciality and developing platforms to share ideas in a world that is becoming ever more interconnected. within the central bank we have being developing key skills to integrate granular data into our decision making and existing risk assessment frameworks. local initiatives covering credit risk and borrower resilience such as the central credit register and european initiatives such as anacredit along with insights on capital market financing from securities statistics have emerged as important tools in supporting decision making within the central bank. our data and analyses also support decisions and public policy on a range of topics impacting households and businesses, most notably with the establishment of irish national claims information database in 2019, as well as ongoing data sharing with the central statistics office for the purposes of national accounts, amongst other things. to future - proof our data as the economy and financial sector evolves, we were also feeding into work on establishing harmonised statistics on distributional financial accounts, occupational pensions and the innovations in payments at the european level, amongst others