It just doesn’t make census – the Galway road left out of survey

Date Published: 20-Jul-2011

A roadway just outside Claregalway became a forgotten part of rural Ireland recently when census enumerators never returned to collect the forms which were due to be filled out by householders on the night of April 10.

The neighbours, unaware that they could post the completed forms back to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), kept the completed forms in their houses and were bemused when the preliminary results of Census 2011 were published last month – without any of their details.

Staff from the CSO contacted one of the families this week, and attempted to make contact with the others, to inform them that it is still not too late to send in their forms via Freepost in order to be included in the final figures.

The discrepancy was highlighted this week by German-based scientist Dr Evan Keane, who was bemused to read the early census results on-line while he was aware that the conpleted form was still sitting in his parents’ house outside Claregalway.

Dr Keane discovered that at least two other families on the road still had their forms last week and, aware that there are €25,000 fines for people who do not fill them out, asked what would happen to householders if nobody bothered to collect them.

See full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune.