The Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) is primarily focused on the collection of information on the income and living conditions of different types of households and individuals in Ireland, in order to derive indicators on poverty, deprivation and social exclusion.
It is a voluntary survey (for selected households). Up until 2020 the SILC was carried out under EU legislation (Council Regulation No 1177/2003) and commenced in Ireland in June 2003. On 01/01/2021 Council Regulation No 1177/2003 was repealed by Regulation (EU) 2019/1700.

The EU-Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) instrument is used as the EU reference source for comparative statistics on income distribution and social inclusion at national and European level. SILC is concerned with the measurement of income and living conditions of both households and individuals in Ireland.

The main poverty and social exclusion statistics presented are the ‘at risk of poverty’ (AROP) rate, the deprivation rate and the consistent poverty rate.

It provides two types of annual data for the 28 European Union countries, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Türkiye:
• Cross-sectional data pertaining to a given time or a certain time period with variables on income, poverty, social exclusion and other living conditions, and
• Longitudinal data pertaining to individual-level changes over time, observed periodically over a two, three, four, five and six-year period.

A number of other key national indicators of poverty and social exclusion are also presented. Income statistics are primarily presented at national level, but they are also broken down by year and the following demographic characteristics;
• Sex
• Age Group
• Principal Economic Status
• Highest Education Level Attained
• Household Composition
• Number of persons at work in the household
• Tenure status
• Urban/rural location • Region Average income is also broken down by the composition of income.

Further distribution analysis of income is conducted through the calculation of the Gini coefficient, the quintile share ratio (QSR), quintile analysis and decile analysis.

As per EU Data Governance Act, re-use must comply with: • EU and national laws protecting the data. • Technical and organisational measures to preserve confidentiality and integrity. • Anonymisation • Licensed by CC-BY 4.0