Au Pair

Is the attic conversion in a bungalow or 2 storey.

If the latter, is it squeaky clean re all the regs?

I know the OP is a few months old, but since another poster is looking for some of the answers, I'll give my experiences.

We hired an au pair 7 years ago. I can't remember the site we advertised on, but we got a few responses and video interviewed vis Skype. The woman we chose was from Spain, was living in Dublin learning English, and was looking to improve her language skills. We're in the west of Ireland, and she had no problem relocating.

Hours were 8.30 to 4.30 Monday to Friday, which is quite long if you think about it. I can't remember what we paid her now, but I do remember it was on the higher end of the scale at the time. One of our requirements was that she could drive and do a school pickup each day for our eldest while bringing the two youngest with her (who were one at the time). She had no problem with that, and we put her as a named driver on the insurance of one of the cars (we had two). That cost next to nothing. We told her that she could also use the car for herself at weekends. If she was just going local, we didn't bother with petrol money, but if she was going further afield (she did a few trips down to Cork and Kerry), she'd top up the tank.

She stayed in a spare room in the house (4 bedroom semi-d). Double bed, wardrobe, desk and chair. We offered to get her a TV, but she said she didn't want one. She obviously had access to our WIFI. We told her she was fully welcome to sit with us in the living room in the evenings, but she very rarely did - most of her free time in the house she spent in her room chatting with her friends in Spain. She made friends here too, and would go out and see them.

For meals, she'd eat with us. We all got on very well, and her English improved greatly in her time with us.

Her duties were mainly taking care of the kids (twin one-year-olds and a 5 year old) so lots of nappy changing, cooking lunch, the school pickup, walks, singing, drawing, nap time, etc. We did ask her to do a little bit of cleaning up too. This actually caused a bit of friction at the time, because I think she thought we wanted her to do all the housework. But when she realised that we were only taking about stuff directly related to the kids (like cleaning up the mess they made on the table and floor shoveling fist fulls of rice into their faces), she was fine with it. I think the moral of that story is to have the job description 100% nailed down at the beginning, so everyone knows exactly where they stand.

Some days she'd cook dinner or put on something we prepared. Other days we'd cook. We did all the shopping and asked her if she wanted anything specific and would just get it if she did, which was rare. Other than that, she was free to help herself to anything that we had in, and we always made sure to have enough. She'd buy stuff for herself too.

A couple of times she offered to babysit in the evening. This wasn't something we expected of her at all, but it was much appreciated. If we were going anywhere at the weekend, we'd ask if she wanted to come along. Often she would.

I've heard of some people imposing weekday curfews on au pairs, so that they'd be in on time to make sure they'd get up in the morning. This woman was in her early 30s, so we didn't have to concern ourselves with that. She was very responsible. She'd go out on a Friday or Saturday nigh, but never caused any issues.

The plan was for her to stay with us for a year, and everything was going very well - we were both talking about her staying longer. However, about 9 months in, her mother in Spain got a serious medical diagnosis, and we encouraged her to go straight home. It turned out that while the mother did did need immediate surgery and some rehabilitation, fortunately she fully recovered. By that time, some months had passed and we had different arrangements in place with family for looking after the kids. The au pair was thinking about moving back to Ireland anyway, but ended up getting a job in a sector she was trained in at home. We kept in contact, and she came to visit us for a weekend about a year later, and then the following summer we spent 2 weeks in a campsite in Spain, where her and her mother came to visit us for a day. The kids were older but remembered her, and we had a great time.

All in all our experience with her was very good. I was quite skeptical about giving over part of our modest house for another adult to live in, but it really did work out. However, this was all before the Labour Court judgements in 2017/18 where it was determined that au pairs were full employees and had to be legally treated as such. To be honest, I think I'd be more reluctant to have an au pair now with these reequipments in place.