propped up behind the mantelpiece clock. Given my virtually anonymous profile as the sole occupant of a single apartment in a 350-unit complex in 12 blocks, I have considered the possibility that I've been overlooked, or I've slipped through the enumerator's net, so to speak.

If that's the case, well, in reality, the omission of the personal data recorded in one uncollected form won't significantly distort the national demographic profile soon to be assembled by civil servants in the Central Statistics Office.

But the CSO apparatchiks are, I suspect, far too thorough to allow that to happen. For weeks I'd watched the TV ads. I'd seen the billboards too. And it seemed every time I turned on the radio I was being reminded that "Sunday April 23 is Census Night." And in our complex there are CSO posters Blutacked to the walls in each apartment foyer.

But exercising my civic duty, I came to realise, might not be the straightforward process it was intended to be. With three days to go until census night I still hadn't received the CSO form. A calling card slipped under my door a week previously advised me the enumerator had called and to expect a return visit. It was Friday night before the knock did finally come on my door.

The enumerator explained that while negotiating the electronic entrance gate wasn't an issue . . . in the evenings the gate is opening and closing continuously as residents come and go . . . gaining access to the individual blocks was proving a problem. Without the appropriate key for each separate block he's obliged to use the intercom system at every main entrance to randomly contact apartment owners until some obliging resident allows him access by unlocking the hall door electronically.

A CSO spokesperson admits that some enumerators are experiencing difficulties delivering and collecting the forms.

"The whole undertaking is very different from last time round. The number of new apartment complexes out there is quite phenomenal. We've been getting feedback up the line that gated communities are posing particular problems.

At the outset, our field operators did contact management companies in relation to codes. But very often it's a case of coming back again and again, trying to catch people as they arrive home from work."

The CSO website contains information in 16 languages including Arabic, Russian and Chinese, and the census form itself is available online in 11 translations, to help nonnational residents who may not be fluent in English.

Every enumerator has been issued with a prompt card with salutations and explanatory phrases in 11 languages to help describe the nature of the work they're involved in and to reassure anyone confused about the process.

"We've been getting evidence of people not opening the door to the enumerator . . . and that wouldn't be specifically in relation to non-nationals, " the spokesperson says. "We don't know how big a problem this is and I suppose you could speculate as to why it's happening. It could be that they're here illegally, that they shouldn't be living at that address, or that for one reason or another they just don't want to fill in the form.

"It's not written in stone that the form had to be filled out on 23 April. So even as the enumerators go about their job collecting forms they'll still be handing them out as well, to anyone they've missed or overlooked for one reason or another."