Groups representing ethnic minorities say they are disappointed that people living in Ireland will not be asked about their ethnicity in next week's census.
The absence of an ethnicity question will make it more difficult to track the social and economic progress of the thousands of people from different minorities, the groups say.
Travellers are the only group who will be directly asked to state their ethnic status, despite the significant increase in ethnic minorities in recent years, including migrant workers and asylum-seekers.
Questions about nationality and country of birth are, however, included in the census, which takes place on April 28th.
The National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism (NCCRI), which includes groups representing ethnic minorities, says "a major opportunity has been missed".
Its chairman, Mr Philip Watt, said: "The fact that there is no question on ethnicity is very disappointing. It's very hard to do long-term planning about multi-cultural Ireland and the needs of specific groups if you don't have data."
Mr Watt said nationality and country of origin questions would not reveal that a French national was of North African descent or a Czech national was a member of the Roma community.
A government spokesman said said the Taoiseach has told the Dáil that the inclusion of an ethnicity question "was considered to be a sensitive issue and the controversy it might cause could have had a detrimental effect on census response rates". The question proposed, to ask people to state if they were white, Irish, Travellers, Black, Chinese, other mixed or other, had not been piloted, he added.