Nearly one-third of all children aged 12 or under use non-parental childcare, figures released by the Central Statistics Office today show.
The figures also show households who paid for childcare spent an average of €144 per week in the last quarter of 2007.
Childcare in Dublin was the most expensive, costing an average of €192 per week, while the South East was the cheapest at €109.
The figures are based on a survey module on childcare included in the Quarterly National Household Survey in the last quarter of 2007.
The survey relates to children aged 12 years and under and was broken down into two categories – “pre-school", referring to children aged between zero and five (inclusive) not yet attending primary school and “primary school”, which covers children in school aged between four and 12.
It found that in the five years between 2002 and 2007 the proportion of households using non-parental childcare for pre-school children increased from 42 to 48 per cent while the rate for primary school children remained unchanged at 25 per cent. On average of children spent 19 hours per week in non-parental childcare.
Some 58 per cent of children who lived in couple households where both parents worked full-time used non-parental childcare. This rate increased to almost two-thirds (65 per cent) in the case of lone parent households with the parent working full-time.
The most common forms of childcare used were unpaid relatives, crèche/montessori/playgroup/after-school facility and childminder (au pair/nanny).
In the case of pre-school children, 19 per cent were cared for in the creche/montessori/playgroup category while 9 per cent of primary school children were cared for by unpaid relatives.
Most respondents to the survey (60 per cent) felt they did not have access to high quality, affordable childcare in their community.
Dublin scored the lowest with only 21 per cent of respondents feeling they had access to quality services while in the Mid-East area 45 per cent felt satisfied with the services available.
