ABOUT 13% OF households have yet to return their census forms and the Central Statistics Office (CSO) wants them back.
This weekend, thousands of weary census enumerators will be knocking on doors – again – in the hopes of finally collecting those remaining pesky documents.
The message from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) is simple: Please answer.
“Almost three weeks have passed now since census night and our enumerators have been putting in an enormous effort to collect the completed census forms,” CSO senior statistician Deirdre Cullen said.
I want to remind people to keep their form safe and convenient and to answer the door to their enumerator when they call.
Saturdays and Sundays are important days for census collections, when more people tend to be at home.
“If you are out enjoying the good weather over the weekend, your enumerator might leave a calling card with their telephone number,” Cullen said.
Please call them and arrange a convenient time for your form to be collected.
Apartment blocks and homes in Dublin city centre are proving the most difficult for enumerators to gain access to.
“Because of the importance of census data in influencing the development of policy, it’s absolutely critical that everyone is included in the census, and that every form is collected,” Cullen said.
If you didn’t fill out your form on census night (24 April), there’s no need to dive behind the couch when the enumerator comes calling. You can still complete it, the CSO says.
“We are getting queries from people who forgot to complete the form on census night. The message to those people is that it’s not too late,” Cullen said.
“If you have the form, please complete it now. If you have lost the form, please get in touch with us and we’ll arrange for a form to be delivered to you.”
So far, 87% of forms have been collected. Once collection is complete, processing and analysing of data will begin.
Preliminary results will be published in July, with the full results available from next March.
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