'I was let down by all my au pairs. Then I cast my mind back to when I was 20'

RTÉ Investigates recent offering, Ireland’s Au Pairs, made for uncomfortable viewing writes Esther McCarthy

There are at least 20,000 au pairs here, becoming synonymous with cheap labour.

Heartbreaking case studies highlighted how vulnerable young women were woefully underpaid and overworked.

We were a host family in 2012, with an online agency, aupair-world.net.

We tried to include the au pairs in our family life.

The deal was they looked after our two boys, 4 and 1 years old, for three and a half days a week, making food for the boys and tidying up after playtime only during those hours.

We paid for English classes, they watched TV with us, met our families, they had boyfriends and friends over. We suggested activities and groups they could join.

Our belief was, honestly, if they were happy, our kids would be happy.

They had their own room and shower and bike, and I would try to bring a little present home at the end of each week.

One girl’s family visited and they were calling the boys their grandchildren by the end of the weekend. But I looked back to the money we were offering then and it was €100 — that seemed to be the going rate then — a pittance.

Kieran Mulvey, director general of the Workplace Relations Commission, said au pairs should be protected under employment law and are entitled to the minimum wage of €8.65.

I completely agree, but enforcing it is going to be tricky.

And if paying an au pair is the same as a childminder, how many households will opt for that?

We liked the idea that someone who lived with the kids would be minding them when we couldn’t. But I would never go down that route again.

Our first au pair spent two weeks with us but never alone with the kids.

We wanted them to get to know each other before leaving the fruit of our loins in her charge.

She had very basic English and didn’t know how to change a nappy despite a reference from a family who said she was nanny to their, count ’em, eight children.

She then told us, through Google Translate, that she was going home on the advice of her reiki master.

Sigh.

This was after weeks of emails and Skype calls and Facebook friending her entire fecking family.

Au pair No 2 was fabulous with the boys, outgoing, not a reiki fan, but still, there was a €350 internet bill, she was homesick, had emotional boyfriend troubles and, worst of all, talked over The Simpsons.

The third girl had experience, knew Cork, good with the lads, but a few days after she arrived had a family emergency and left.

More frantic scrambling of family and friends to fill the gaps.

No 4 seemed to tick every box.

I picked her up off the bus, and two days later put her back on it.

She cleaned us out of Kleenex, just sat, weeping quietly on the couch, and said she missed home.

Was it us?

Then I remembered, when I was 20, I was hired as a nanny for a rich, very disturbed little girl in New York.

I hightailed it after two weeks, hitching a lift to the nearest Irish bar, leaving them to mind their own goddamn kid.

Karma’s a bitch.