Who’s minding the children: Meet the grandparents

GRANDPARENTS are acting as unpaid babysitters saving parents thousands in childcare fees.

In Dublin, if grandparents provide a free full-time childminding service, savings on creche fees are almost €9,000 per annum.

This is based on an average full-time creche fee of €724 per month in the capital, according to the findings of an Irish Examiner/Lansdowne Market Research (LMR) poll, the first of its kind.

Elsewhere in the country, parents using grandparents full-time average savings of €575 a month, or almost €7,000 annually.

While the survey of 1,081 parents with children under the age of 14 found more than half (52%) have a parent in the home full-time, one in five depend on a family relation, primarily grandparents, for childcare.

Of those who do use a family member, one in three depend on grandparents, the majority of whom provide full-time childcare. This is particularly the case where both parents work full-time and the children are of pre-school age.

The savings to parents who rely on their mothers and fathers to look after their children are significant across the board. While one in five parents pay nothing for childcare and another 19% pay less than €200 a month, those who do pay family members fork out an average of just €279 a month.

This is far lower than full-time creche fees -the most expensive childcare option - and well behind the average fee paid to a formal full-time childminder of €491.

Although half of single parents are full-time childminders, almost one in three depend on family.

Just 13% of households use an independent childminding service to meet their childcare needs, but this is significantly higher in households where both parents work full-time and the children are of pre-school age. In this instance, four in 10 use a childminder.

This drops to just one in 10 for parents with children over the age of five, probably because they are of school-going age. Up to the age of four, 17% of parents use a childminder compared to just 7% of single parents, which tallies with many of them staying at home or depending on relations.

Just 6% of parents use a creche, and half of this number only use it part-time, unsurprising given the exorbitant costs.

Not surprisingly, households where both parents work and have pre-school children are most dependent on creche facilities, with almost one in four choosing this option. Just 3% of parents use after-school care.