What does a stadium rocker or the Pope see in a crowd of 500,000, a million or more? It is said that when you are on stage and look out at a vast audience, you see an amorphous mass, as if there were no individual faces. Perhaps you notice some movements on the edges of the crowd. For some, it is probably better not to see everyone all at once. A radio or TV presenter can deal with tens, even hundreds of phone-in callers, but what if he or she had to stand in front of, see and hear the hundreds of thousands of listeners and viewers for each broadcast? It could be disorientating, even intimidating.
For marketing people, policy planners, commentators and analysts, to miss the reality of the large centre for the slight changes at the edge would be a serious mistake, as if the sea were all breaking waves and no slowly swelling depths. To distinguish the centre from the margin, the silent majority from the squeaky wheel, the stock from the flow, the anecdote from the established trend, is fundamental. A couple of examples come to mind about statistics, the margins and the centre.
The growth of credit card outstanding balances has been lamented as a sign of a societal consumerist binge. There were 1.8 million credit cards in issue to Irish residents at the end of October last, according to the Central Bank, up 20 per cent from October 1999. Outstanding credit card debts amounted to €901 million, up 23 per cent in the same period, just under the overall rate of private sector credit growth. That seems like it might qualify as bringing on credit cards. But the sea behind the crashing waves of credit card debt was the €36.4 billion in total loans to Irish residents by retail clearing banks, excluding mortgage lending. That puts credit card debt at a mere 2.5 per cent of the total. The relevant total is the critical point.
We see credit cards, but we don't see overdrafts. Overdrafts, at €4.7 billion, amount to more than five times credit card debt. Per card, the average amount outstanding was €500. It isn't good financial management to have a continual credit card debt, but does the full context really mean there is a specific credit card binge? Mobile phones are another new mass market. An eye-catching statistic this week was a prediction from Jemma Houlihan of ABN Amro that the ratio of mobile phones to population would reach 85 per cent by mid-2001. That would represent 3.1 million phones, on the basis of the 1996 census of the Republic's population at 3.6 million. To picture an 85 per cent ownership rate, it would be as if every man, woman, child and baby had a mobile phone, except persons over 60 years of age in 1996.
The mobile phone market is now the whole population, and more, as some people have two phones. Thus, the most simple count of how many people are now living in the Republic is of central importance. This year will bring a major event that should bring clarity to perception of some Irish central realities. We will have a new, bigger and better census.
The five years since the last census have coincided with the unprecedented boom, of course, and there is good reason to look forward to confirmation of what the effect has been on population and immigration. No-one knows exactly how many Irish emigrants have actually returned to live here, and nationals of the European Economic Area can also come and go without clicking a statistical turnstile.
An earlier study on population projections by the Central Statistics Office predicted that the Republic would have a population of four million by 2006. This looks fairly conservative now. This year's census will include important new questions on nationality, disability, membership of the Travelling community, computer ownership and Internet connections (those two are fast becoming one question). An ethnicity question was replaced by the one on nationality by the Government. Interestingly, the questions on disability were added after the CSO's consultation process, where about half of all representations received related to gathering disability statistics.
The census will be taken on Sunday, April 29th, and preliminary results giving overall population with a regional breakdown should be available in summer. Final figures are due in 2002, which seems quite a long time after April 29th 2001 for such eagerly-awaited and vital data. While results from 1996 were published on a CD-ROM, the full use of available technology in 2002 should allow for a very imaginative and user-friendly access to the statistics.
As ever, neither technology, nor the diligence of the CSO can guard against misperceiving the waves for the ocean, the marginal out-liers for the central case. For that, questioning and judgment will still be needed.
Oliver O'Connor is contributing editor at Finance and Finance Dublin.
E-mail ooconnor@indigo.ie
