Creches closing for 3 days from today

Given the wages are supposedly a pittance then its probable they couldn't afford to.

This is a bit heavy on the maths side. You're right, but it doesn't consider other losses like potential promotions during those years if, for example, the mother stays at home. It doesn't include the work experience and progress they make in a professional sense which could earn them more income longer term like 7 to 10 years. It doesn't consider the fact that families who do that end up getting into a routine where the parent who leaves work tends to continue being chief parent later on, which makes it difficult again to do as well as if they had stayed in the rat race. Sure they're supposed to share responsibilities but the reality is that the parent who stayed working got a few promotions,they're earning more and don't have the time to make the lunches or help with the homework or deal with the parents WhatsApp chat.

Mentally it can be quite challenging to get back into the rat race after 3 or 4 years out with the kids, or more years if you have a second kid. You're applying for jobs with say a 5 year gap in your CV and you're up against other people who are currently doing similar jobs elsewhere.

Thanks god it's day 3.

I'm exhausted. I've need to work fractured work days. Basically work while my 1 year is asleep during the day, and then once my wife gets home from work, continue working until around 21:30.

My day now basically runs from 6:45 to 21:30, and then I get to relax.

I was more than happy to pay the creche for these 3 days of strikes, but not too sure if I'll be as quick to put my hand in my pocket next time around

And on the very cynical side, (if the threads on Separation/Divorce are anything to go by) if a mother takes a few years out of the workplace to raise the children, she is "not contributing".

Yes I personally think it's decent value considering they're fed a few meals a day, do lots of art, kept safe, build friendships, are prepped mentally to start school all for under 5 euro an hour and in my case that came down as my daughters got older.

What a lot of parents are complaining about is that this is not enough for the creches - my own creche closed for 4 weeks this year unexpectedly because they couldn't find staff to work there. We turned up in the morning and they sent us away. So 2 weeks of my annual leave was taken up by that.

Also, in many creches, parents are unable to pay for just 3 or 4 days a week. They're forced to pay for 5 days or take a hike which isn't the norm with that young age group across developed nations.

There are other crazy things like, for example, I'm not allowed to collect my daughter early from the creche because the government subsidy doesn't cover for the number of hours I paid for, but the number of hours my daughter physically sits in the creche. My one year old was teething with a high temperature about a month ago, and I had to stand outside for 40 minutes waiting until 4:30pm or I'd lose the government subsidy.

All of this stems back to the creches being under a serious financial strain. If it weren't for the price caps, parents would probably be charged 1500 to 2000 euro per child now to cover energy cost increases, increases to food costs, art supplies, insurance, and obviously childcare workers (because the current rates aren't enough to attract people to the workforce).

The reason the crèche won’t let you split the week with another family is if they leave they are stuck looking for a family with the same needs as the one that left to suit your days. Margins are far too tight to give that flexibility.

We chose not to use in home care because there’s more safety in numbers. Add to that the socialization that children get from their peers just wouldn’t be recreated in a home setting. We met other parents, I was in the parents association too. Wouldn’t have had that kind of experience with a childminder.

That's just pure whataboutery though. You're not addressing the point. Just sh*tting all over where it's coming from.

Ideas don't have a nationality.

It's a f*cking awful idea no matter where it's from. People in first world countries earning first world wages (and usually well above the median in these countries) seeking to exploit labour from third world countries. If you are earning the going rate from your job but don't want to pay the going rate for people you employ, it's grossly hypocritical to say the very least.

It's not the creche, it's the government. The creche are just the messengers delivering the numbers. The government lives in cloud cuckoo land where they think that parents should be able to pay for the hours that the kids are in the creche. So even though the vast majority of parents are forced to pay for the entire week and every hour in it, the government's subsidy is only paid out for the number of hours the child physically stays in the creche. It's like they're earning a wage.

There is a parent in our creche who doesn't work Fridays and she wanted to keep her kid home from creche because they're still quite young. But the creche said that the government will take the subsidy off her unless she brings the child to the creche.

So next time you hear the government talking about how they're paying 25 per cent of the fees - just note that they only pay it if the child physically turns up and earns it.

I'm here wanting to collect my child early every day because we work from home, which would relieve pressure from the creche, and the government is saying I'm not allowed if I want to keep the subsidy.

So what happens to the subsidy if someone has to take a sick child home?

Or they can't go in for a few days because they're sick?

So the person who wanted to take their sick child out 40 min early, would have a small reduction in payment and there would be a bit of paper work? But they decided to leave the child in creche rather than do that?

Well I can’t speak for someone else’s anecdote but it would appear so

Well it would seem like the obvious solution is to take the child out and suck up the small reduction in subsidy surely.