Jennifer O’Connell: Irish people can’t cope with domestic help

There are a few issues every society has to grapple with in a time of increased living standards. Is it ever appropriate to install a laundry chute in a converted one-bedroom artisan cottage? Will you build a glass-encased office mezzanine? Should you get an au pair? The answer, in every case, is no.

On the first two, you've been watching too much Room to Improve.

Yes, it’s true that au pairs represent something we need more of, which is an affordable childcare solution. But it’s equally true that Irish people are not well equipped to cope with domestic help of any description – not even teenagers who provide bargain-rate childcare, while sleeping on a pull-out sofa under a Thomas the Tank Engine duvet.

In any case, the Workplace Relations Commission recently found that the up to 20,000 au pairs in this country are not actually au pairs. Instead, they're full employees, entitled to the minimum wage. In exchange for board and lodging, families can deduct just €54.13 a week. The jig is up and it might be a blessing in disguise.

Let’s just face it – all nations have their strengths and being domestic employers is not one of ours. We have historically been a people more in servitude than served, and we collapse in a heap of guilty inadequacy when the tables are turned.

Frau Schmitz decided that if I was going to behave like a child and not cook, she would treat me like a child, doling out a toddler's portions of food and fluids from an actual sippy cup

We clean before the cleaner arrives because we wouldn’t want them to think we were dirty. When it comes to au pairs, we spend all our time making them cups of tea, and telling them to sit down there and not mind that ironing/those children/that chip pan ablaze in the kitchen. If they’re unlucky enough to come from a place where people say what they mean, and take us at our word, we’re straight on the phone.

“The lazy cow,” we seethe. “She’s in there with her cup of tea, and the kitchen burning down around her…”

I've been binge-watching The Tudors on Netflix, so I know how it is supposed to be. Domestic staff are meant to know their place which, if The Tudors is to be believed, was 80 per cent likely at any given time to be in the king's bed. Any hint of infraction and they were straight to the chopping block. In those days, this was not a euphemism for pretending that your hours have been cut back and you're no longer in need of the services of Gabi from Baden-Wurttemberg.

"Just make potatoes," she hissed, presumably in the assumption that the authorities would not have given out an Irish passport without some test of potato preparation skills

I’ve had several, fantastic live-out nannies and childminders over the years, some of whose presence in my life I mourn daily. Our relationships worked because I regarded them not as domestic help but highly-paid experts, a cross between crisis managers, creative geniuses and the Army explosives unit.

I have never actually hired an au pair. The prospect terrifies me because I have been an au pair.

Prowess

The lucky recipients of my 16-year-old domestic and child-wrangling prowess were a respectable German family who lived on the edge of the Black Forest. To be fair to them, the advert did indicate that some “food preparation” would be required. I didn’t think they really meant it. “They can’t seriously expect a 16-year-old will know how to cook,” I told my best friend, jamming another bottle of sun lotion into my suitcase.

Then, as now, I couldn’t cook. On the first day, as Frau Schmitz left for work, she waved at the fridge and told me to make whatever for the children’s lunch and dinner, and she’d be back about 8pm. I confessed in broken German that I wasn’t actually that accomplished a cook.

"Just make potatoes," she hissed, presumably in the assumption that the authorities would not have given out an Irish passport without some test of potato preparation skills. This was in the days before Google or mobile phones, so I had to make a reverse-charges call to my granny in Waterford to find out how to boil a spud.

Clear boundaries

Frau Schmitz decided that if I was going to behave like a child and not cook, she would treat me like a child, doling out a toddler’s portions of food and fluids, from an actual sippy cup, which as the temperatures hit the 30s left me in a constant state of dehydration and near-starvation, much to the amusement of the children. Frau Schmitz understood how to set clear boundaries for her domestic staff.

Of course, this experience isn't typical. Most host families are not borderline psychopaths. There are many such relationships that are healthy, happy and mutually beneficial – I've seen several of my friends navigate the host family thing with the benevolence and authority of Catherine of Aragon.

Like it or not, the days of Ireland as a nation of single-income families are dwindling, and the concept of paid domestic help, including au pairs, is one we need to stop regarding as the worst kind of notions and start properly regulating for. We need some kind of framework to help us navigate it – because we certainly aren't historically or genetically equipped.

I’m also secretly hankering after an office mezzanine. Is there any way we ban the laundry chutes, though?