Anne Iurascu used to think the man who is now her husband, Iulian, was being abrupt when she phoned to ask how he was.

And he used to think she was evasive. "Like if I'd call and ask him, 'How are you?' " says Anne, who is 26, "he'd answer, 'I'm drinking coffee.' Oh, I'd get so annoyed," she laughs, throwing her eyes to heaven, as if reliving the annoyance. "It felt like he was telling me he was too busy."

Iulian, who is 30, sits forward almost anxiously to explain how, in Romanian, "How are you?" means "What are you doing?" He says: "To say, 'How are you?' we say, 'How do you do?' But, you know, for a long time I thought Irish people were lying. They never seem to tell the truth, to be straight. They don't say, 'Yes, I will be there.' Instead [ they say], 'I will see if I can,' or, 'I hope I will be.' It is never black and white but lots of grey."

The two got over such difficulties and, five years after they met, were married in Rome earlier this year. Anne is from Dublin and Iulian from Barlad, in eastern Romania. Although they have not yet had children, the couple plan to. And according to the last Census, the Republic now has 127,327 "family units" of mixed nationality, almost 10 times higher than the 13,095 entirely foreign households.

With net immigration now standing at about 30,000 a year and the Economic and Social Research Institute predicting further increases if economic growth is to be sustained at 5 per cent, mixed-race households will increase too. How to raise their children, which religious festivals to observe and how to deal with prejudice against mixed-race children are issues that will force themselves onto more and more households' agendas.

Edel Freeman, who is 29, and her seven-year-old son, Shane, live on an estate on the outskirts of Kells, in Co Meath. Edel is originally from Co Cavan; Shane's father was a colleague in the Dublin hotel where she was working eight years ago.

"He was from Angola. I was going out with him about a year when I found out I was pregnant. He went back to Angola to get his papers right to come back into the country." She says she chose to have Shane on her own and didn't tell her family about him until he was born, when she told her two sisters.

"They were a bit shocked, I think because he is half-caste, though they were both nurses, so they were used to seeing black children. My parents were a bit shocked too. In the village I come from in Cavan you wouldn't really see a black person, not at that time, anyway. But he's their favourite grandchild now," she smiles.

But Shane experiences a lot of name calling on the estate, she says. "Other kids call him a black bastard or a black nigger, tell him to go back to the jungle. He does get angry, and the name calling has made him come back into the house crying. I suppose they are hearing comments like that from their parents."

The number of mixed-race couples in the Republic remains relatively small, and research on them is sparse. Studies in the US suggest there can be particular problems for the children of such unions. Part of the challenge is that even in families that discuss multiracial issues, monoracial parents can't speak from experience, says Matthew Kelley, founder of the Mavin Foundation, a US organisation that supports research into multiracial family issues. (Its name is from the Hebrew for "one who understands".)

"Most likely they don't know what it's like to be multiracial," he says. "The children can sometimes feel even more isolated, because they don't feel like they can look to their parents for knowledge and sympathy and understanding."

Iulian and Anne are adamant their children will be immersed in both their Irish and their Romanian heritages. "I will want them to be proud of their Romanian culture. I hope they are going keep their language and traditions and be able to choose, when the time is right, whether they want to live in Ireland or in Romania."

Iulian says he has not experienced

racism in Ireland, though he is well aware

it exists. He believes that as immigrants and Irish people mingle more, racism will dwindle. "When you combine two perspectives you look at something from two points of view - and get a better result."

THE MIXED-RACE FAMILY

127,327

That's how many of Ireland's "family units", with children, comprise Irish and foreign members. This compares with 13,095 all-foreign and 547,423 all-Irish.

The main issues

Negotiating cultural, religious and language differences within the family

Contending with racism, discrimination or both

A particular problem is that the difficulties mixed-race children face may be different from those their parents face