Creche fees. How much are you paying?

victor8600 wrote: »

Best wishes! Of course, everyone is different. It seems from the thread that cheche fees are particularly high in Dublin. Also if you don't have to pay much for the accommodation, it also helps. My two kids have a 4 year difference in age, so it is easier as we never had to pay creche fees for both as the same time.

Neyite wrote: »

If the childcare workers strike affects enough working parents having to take a day off to mind their child, then employers wont be happy. And if the employers as well as the parents back the childcare workers, maybe something might be done.

But then again, this is Ireland. It would probably need every work place to grind to a halt before anyone bothers.

angela1711 wrote: »

Don’t be fooled. I don’t know a single childminder that would pay their taxes. 15e an hour ?? It’s a pure joke to be paying someone this kind of money for minding your child. They usually have jobseekers or other social welfare payment on top of whatever you are paying them. Where I live, the going rate for a childminder is 4-7e an hour and the crèche is 4-5e an hour.

traveller2 wrote: »

Have two kids in a crèche and got a land in recent weeks with news that fees to rise by approximately 25%, in effect.
We had two kids in four days per week, plus one availing of ECCE on the fifth day, the eldest.
Now, the crèche is saying they will only take the under-1 five and not four days a week as is, and fees for him to rise by 200 euro a month, plus the extra day.
Also, the eldest has to go in either five full or five half days, but not four full days as is. So in effect five full days.
A back of the envelope calculation means its going to rocket to 2,000 a month, from 1,500.
One of us will likely have to take parental leave or unpaid leave for 6 months or so to get us over the hump if we can’t stump up.
We are Dublin based, and crèche fees likely not much lower elsewhere, and availability not great.
What are people doing in our shoes? Au Pair an option? How much would that cost by comparison?
In terms of a chid minder who’d mind two of them in our home etc, how much would that cost? One is due to start school in September, so the crèche thing was coming to an end for the eldest at least.
Just struggling for ideas on this, and presently trying to crunch financial numbers.
Thanks a mill!

theteal wrote: »

It's felt like a long time coming but now that she's 3, the free childcare has kicked in (UK). 30 hours. We were paying for 20 hours @ £4.75ph which was a steal in itself. We're now ditching her for an extra day. If feels like a payrise!

Dublin 18, Stepaside Giraffe, €1,090 per month after NCS discount of €80. It's 5 days a week, open 9 hours a day (8 to 17:00), there's no discount for attending fewer days; that went away before we started, in later summer 2020. Bank Holidays and Christmas closures are charged for too, which hurts. Ditto when the weather man shut down the country over some fallen leaves getting violently displaced this winter.

Should soon qualify for ECCE, which is 3 hours a day for 38 weeks a year, hoping it'll reduce the cost proportionally (25% by back-of-a-napkin maths).

Though looking at NCS, it seems that expires when she's 3, so we'll lose that discount later this year.

Anyone willing to post before and after costs as they qualified for ECCE? TIA.

Slightly off topic but..

Something that’s cropped up for us recently….do you pay your childminder for sick weeks that you’ve took off work to mind your sick child……?

Did this recently, our child is always catching something for a few days here and there, we thought well they’re not minding our child, why should we pay for the week…..

Always amazing to our son, lovely people but who’s right?? It’s not a crèche! Under the table no taxes and they’re not happy…. Is it fair to have to pay for sick days?

Crèche spots are very hard to get as there aren’t really enough spots and they are all struggling for staff.

a good childminder is a very difficult thing to find, as someone above alluded to once you have one that is working out you need to make sure you keep them. There’s a huge amount of luck in finding one that will accommodate your schedule and suits your kids/requirements.

Best we could do was get our 2 kids in different creches...

4 year old is in full time (open 0800 to 1800), after ECCE and NCS, it's €870 per month.

2 year old is in full time elsewhere (open 0730 to 1830), after NCS, it's €1050 per month.

With all the illness this winter though, it's been a struggle to get the kids in for full 5 day weeks, which you need to do to maintain NCS funding. If the 2 year old isn't in all week this week, his NCS funding will be halved so price will go up to €1150 or so.

It sounds right, prices are going up so the subsidy is really just off setting that at the moment. It’s all too complicated for the providers and something is going to have to give.

It’s so disappointing to be honest.

I’ve heard politicians going on about how they are lowering the cost of childcare but they absolutely are not.

I don’t know from the pov of the childcare provider but they seem to be creating more work for them.

See my post above yours with prices we are paying in South Dublin also, which is in line (in fact yours is a bit cheaper). Our 2 year old is €1350 - NCS.

NCS funding is simply €1.40 per hour, up to 45 hours p/w. So if they are in fulltime, it maxs out at €63 per week or about €270 per month.

We use 2 different creches, one medium chain (5 or so premises), one small (2 premises), and both bemoan NCS system on a weekly basis. And as a parent it's a total pain in the arse having to make sure you hit the declared hours regularly so as to maintain funding.

Thankfully our crèche hasn’t followed up on the NCS hours with us since they were submitted last year.

Last year we were paying just over €2k a month for two. With the increase in NCS funding it dropped to just over €1700 which has been some help.

We pay €1k after NCS for our 2 year old and that’s on a corporate rate!

My wife is absolutely crushed by the work load in it, there is so much unnecessary parts that could easily have been streamlined. The crèches are having to do a pile of extra work and get next to nothing extra out of it. The bigger chains have admin staff but the small chains and standalone crèches must really be feeling the pain. They are being pushed into a lot of things and feel it’s moving toward the state taking over childcare but without the hassle of running childcare. I get the impression her boss is just about done with the whole business.

Yep we were paying over 2k ourselves at one point when we had the first two in childcare. Absolute insane.

It just annoys me that government ministers are going on about the great progress in childcare costs yet we are still paying 927 a month!!