Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Organic Unit

Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine,

Johnstown Castle Estate

Wexford

Ireland

The collected statistics for the country cover the following data:

• Certified registered organic operators (referring to their main or secondary activity) (expressed in number of operators)
• Certified registered organic processors who manufacture organic products (as their main or secondary activity) (expressed in number of processors)
• Certified organic crop area (under conversion and fully converted) (expressed in hectares)
• Certified organic crop production from fully converted area (expressed in 1 000 kg)
• Certified organic livestock (expressed in heads of live animals)
• Production of certified organic products of animal origin (expressed in 1 000 kg of carcass weight and in thousand eggs)
• Production of certified organic milk products (Produced on farms or Processed on farms or by dairy enterprises) and Honey and products of bee-keeping (expressed in 1 000 kg of products obtained)
• Certified organic aquaculture sold by producers (expressed in 1 000 kg live weight)

See ESS Agreement on Organic Production Statistics

See Organic farming Metadata

See Organic farming Metadata

See Organic farming Metadata

See Organic farming Metadata

Republic of Ireland

Calendar year of 2022

Not applicable.

• Certified registered organic operators (referring to their main or secondary activity) (expressed in number of operators)
• Certified registered organic processors who manufacture organic products (as their main or secondary activity) (expressed in number of processors)
• Certified organic crop area (under conversion and fully converted) (expressed in hectares)
• Certified organic crop production from fully converted area (expressed in 1 000 kg)
• Certified organic livestock (expressed in heads of live animals)
• Production of certified organic products of animal origin (expressed in 1 000 kg of carcass weight and in thousand eggs)
• Production of certified organic milk products (Produced on farms or Processed on farms or by dairy enterprises) and Honey and products of bee-keeping (expressed in 1 000 kg of products obtained)
• Certified organic aquaculture sold by producers (expressed in 1 000 kg live weight)

Calendar year 2022

REGULATION (EU) 2017/625 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL

A Data Sharing agreement and Service level agreement are in place with both our Organic Control Bodies.

In accordance with Article 27 and 28 of Council Regulation (EC) No. 834/2007, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine has delegated control tasks to the Organic Control Bodies
In accordance with Article 27 of EU Regulation 834/2007, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine is the Competent Authority in respect of organic production. In order to operate the control systems to which operators producing, preparing storing, or importing from third countries, products as referred to in the relevant EU Regulations are subject, data sharing is required with the Organic Control Bodies to which the certification and inspection of organic operators is delegated.
As such, the Organic Control Bodies are the operators of the control system to which operators producing, preparing, storing, or importing from third countries, products as referred to in Article 1 of Council Regulation (EC) No. 834/2007 are subject. We have Data Sharing agreements in place under the above legislation with both Organic Control Bodies. The Data Sharing Agreement is specific that all steps and all information shared should be under the control of the Organic Control Body specifically see headings Processing of Data by Receiving Bodies, Security, Confidentiality and ownership & procedure for data loss/breach. No idenitifier is used when gathering information for the dataset provided by the commission

Not applicable

Data is publised by the Commission on the Eurostat webpage, however if a request is made to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine the data could be supplied.

Data will only be made available once the Commission has signed off same typically after the 30th of June of the following year.

No national release calendar is in place for organic production statistics. Information will be released on an adhoc basis where appropriate when it is requested

Not applicable

Not applicable

Yearly

NA

Commission publishes statistics on the Eurostat Webpage, see below URL.

Statistics are not published nationally,  however information is available if requested.

There is no national online database

NA

Microdata is not disseminated 

Commission publishes the data on Eurostat.

Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, would disseminate data mostly through Parliamentary Questions, however most questions don't require the full set of data as an answer. 

Once a year for Commision, Other queries throughout the year do not require the full set of data as an answer. 

NA

Not applicable.

NA

 Organic Control Bodies sign a Service Level Agreement in which they are required to be accredited to current ISO Standards (currently ISO 27001)

A yearly audit is completed with each Organic Control Body, see below audit checklist

DAFM carry out an office audit on each approved OCB (annual inspection) as per commission regulation 2017/625 (Art 33) and Regulation 2018/848 (Art 40). During the annual inspection, the DAFM will verify the following: (a) the compliance with the control body’s standard control procedure as submitted by the control body to the competent authority in accordance with Article 40(1) of Regulation (EC) No 2018/848.; (b) that the control body has a sufficient number of suitably qualified, experienced and impartial staff, as well as the expertise, equipment and infrastructure required to perform official control tasks in accordance with Article 29(b) of Regulation (EC) No 2017/625 and that training concerning risks affecting the organic status of products has been implemented; (c) That the control body has and follows documented procedures and templates for: (i) The risk assessment procedure in accordance with Article 38 of Regulation (EC) No 2018/848 and Article 9 of Regulation (EU) 2017/625. (ii) Preparing a risk-based sampling strategy, conducting sampling and laboratory analysis. (iii) Information exchange with other control bodies and with the competent authority. (iv) Initial, follow-up controls and effective monitoring of operators under their control; (v) The application and follow-up to the catalogue of measures to be applied in case of suspected or established non-compliance. (vi) Observing the requirements of the protection of personal data for the operators under its control as laid down by the Member States where that competent authority operates and in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC. (vii) That the Control Body works and is accredited in accordance with standard EN ISO/IEC 17020 ‘Requirements for the operation of various types of bodies performing inspection’ as required under Article 29 of Regulation (EC) No 2017/625 During this audit the inspector will randomly select several files for inspection. These files are checked to ensure the effectiveness of the OCB inspection. Any issue identified will be conveyed to the OCB for their appropriate attention. If a serious non-compliance is found that implicate the OCB, DAFM may suspend or withdraw the approval of the OCB, as provided for in Section 10 of the Service Agreements. The 2022 HQ audit finds that both OCB's operate to a satisfactory level as an approved OCB

Commission uses the information to update Eurostat.

Members of Parliament require certain aspects of the statistical information, depending on their speciality or area of concern.

Memebers of the media have previously requested access to certain aspects of the statistcal informaiton again dependant on area of speciality.

All feedback is welcome, however we do not send out offical surveys regarding statistics.

All compulsory fields are completed

WE provide 100% of all information that is required within the Dataset

Transcribing error's - i.e data is correct however when being transcibed onto dataset a input error could be made by the organic control body.

To reduce this bias we have instructed the organic control bodies to have a second check on the data returned to us.  Department of Agriculture staff also compare data with the data provided under the same heading in the previous year.  If there is a large difference we could ask the organic control bodies to reexamine the data provided.

NA

NA

NA

Na

NA

NA

NA

NA

NA

Na

Transcribing error's - i.e data is correct however when being transcibed onto dataset a input error could be made by the organic control body.

To reduce this bias we have instructed the organic control bodies to have a second check on the data returned to us.  Department of Agriculture staff also compare data with the data provided under the same heading in the previous year.  If there is a large difference we could ask the organic control bodies to reexamine the data provided.

Not applicable.

See concepts below.

 6 months

 Normally 6 months but could be 7 months if queries arise

See concepts below.

Release is directed by the commission.  The datasets are completed when required.

 Data is comparable

Not applicable.

Statistics are comparable

No break since 2009 for all of the below headings.

• Certified registered organic operators
• Certified registered organic processors
• Certified organic croparea
• Certified organic cropproduction
• Certified organic livestock
• Production of certified organic products of animal origin
• Production of certified organic milk products
• Certified organic aquaculture

IFS data and annual crop statistics are sourced by using the same administrative sources as data for organic production statistics.  

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Statistics are consistent

One executive office salary .5 of a day per week over the year.  We also require our Organic Control Bodies to provide some of the information, this is not within our remit and therefore we are unable to quantify same.

We are in the process of developing a new system, which should capiture the majority of information required for these returns.  This will be used to help with the burden.

We do not make any alternation or amendments to data recieved from our Organic Control Bodies.

We do not make any alternation or amendments to data recieved from our Organic Control Bodies.

Not applicable.

The data is complied by our Organic Control Bodies who collect the information.

 Annual

We use the Dataset provided by the commission.  This is sent to the Organic Control Bodies for completion. Figures are compared to previous returns to ensure accuarcy.

• Checking that the population coverage and response rates are as required;  - All organic licenced operators are included in the statistics.
• Comparing the statistics with previous data collections;  - Each year the statistics are checked against the previous years return.
• Investigating inconsistencies in the statistics; - If there are any queries, we request a double check on the numbers.
• Flagging of data (confidentiality, reliability). - No identifier is included with any of the statistics.

We use the Dataset provided by the commission.  This is sent to the Organic Control Bodies for completion. Figures are compared to previous returns to ensure accuarcy.

No substitute values are used

NA

Not applicable.