The final Census report will not be more than one month late, according to the Premier.

And she praised the staff of the Statistics Department of achieving almost 100 percent household coverage when the census was conducted in the summer of 2000.

"The result is a data file that is rich in a wealth of information on Bermuda's social fabric," she said.

In her reply to Opposition criticism during last Friday's House debate of the Statistics Act, Premier Jennifer Smith said the Statistics Department's "perfectionism" was the reason behind this "minuscule" delay.

By the end of August 2000, she said 96 percent of households had been accounted for by the Census. And the department had to send workers back into the field for a "mopping up" operation which took place in November of that year - increasing household coverage to 99.5 percent.

"I have to say if our Department of Statistics did not have a high sense of commitment to the ability of the department to be able to enumerate every household in Bermuda, we would have done like many other countries who would consider 99.5 percent response extremely high," she said. "I would dare to say very few other countries achieve that level.

"But certainly if we here in this small country cannot achieve that level who else can ? Mr. Speaker it is because of that lair of perfectionism - of wanting to get the best possible response that that effort was made. And I'm quite pleased with and quite proud of the fact that the census operation was able to return that kind of coverage."

She reminded her House colleagues that a shortage of field staff led to the extension of the enumeration period well into the summer after the original count was done in May, 2000.

She said while the preliminary report had suffered some delay, the final report will be ready in July - just one month behind the original schedule.

"Despite the delays that have been caused by the shortage of enumerators, the objective still remains to produce the final census report by this summer one month later than the original plan."

Ms Smith also commented on the annual Employment Survey, saying that the 2000 results had been finalised and the report published "shortly".

The 2001 report will be prepared by the end of March, she said, with preliminary results available in the economic review.

Earlier during the day's session, Opposition Leader Grant Gibbons had criticised Government saying a number of reports were long overdue, and had a tendency to choose to release information only when it was politically expedient to do so.