Childcare

***Warning, this post contains unchecked moaning about the cost of living in Ireland, if you don’t want to hear yet another person going on about this tired old subject please stop reading now!***

I have been very lucky so far with my childcare. My sister has been looking after Eve since I started working again this summer and it’s been the perfect set-up. She’s a qualified nanny with many years experience and she needed something to fill the gap while she got herself sorted with her own creche. So it was great for both of us.

Now she’s finally starting up her own place, it’s going to be excellent and I know she’s going to do really well and I’m delighted for her. Unfortunately it means I have to face up to the reality that is Childcare in Ireland since my sister lives all the way down in Wicklow and it’s too far to try and get Eve to her every day.

So my options are:

1. Put Eve into a créche
2. Hire a nanny from a local ad (probably not qualified)
3. Hire a nanny through an agency
4. Get an au pair
5. Matt gives up his job and becomes Mr. Mom

Number 1 is a road I just didn’t want to go down; we moved back to Ireland so that I could be at home with Eve, even if I’m working in another room I can still stop what I’m doing and feed her or play with her or just give her a cuddle. Plus it’s hard to find a créche without a long waiting list and a crippling fee (over €1000 a month isn’t unusual around here).

Number 2 is not ideal because it’s scary enough hiring a stranger to mind your child without taking a chance on someone with no qualifications who you’ve found via a flyer in a shop window.

Number 3 was the route we were looking at up until I checked the fine print. Agency fees are 10% the gross salary you’ll be paying the nanny plus 21% VAT! So, if you’re planning on paying a nanny €10 an hour (which isn’t as much as a lot of nannies will be looking for…most charge €12 an hour), that adds up to a gross salary of €12,000 per annum for a part-time job, which means the agency is looking for the guts of €1,500 for just introducing you to a nanny! So in the first month we’d have to pay a total of €2,500. We just can’t afford that. I shudder to think of what it would be like for someone looking for a full-time nanny. The first month would cost roughly something like €4,300!

Number 4 would be great and would be the option I’d jump at if only we had a bigger house. Yet another worn-out topic of conversation here in Ireland: the price of buying or renting a house. We’re paying over €1000 a month for a small 3 bedroom house (except a bed wouldn’t fit in the 3rd one) and a larger house in the same area would be at least €5oo more.

Number 5 is starting to look very appealing and unless I start getting more imaginative with my methods of finding someone Matt will be staying at home. Of course, with just one salary coming in our chances of ever being able to buy our own place are seriously in doubt.

Cue the violins.

childcare