I have had four babies in Holles St, but all by CS and am going back there again to have dc5. The private consultants fees alone are 3500 and only 500 of that is recoverable from VHI althoug the hospital bed itself is covered. I went semi-private on ds1 and private for all the others, mainly because I was not happy with the doctor who did my CS on ds1 and wanted to be able to choose the doctor the next time. The consultant will only guarantee to be present at the birth if you are private. Obviously for a natural delivery, this is not so much of a problem because you are doing most of the work and the MW's do the rest!
I have ended up in public wards in Holles St and tbh I didn't find the nursing care as good as when I was on a private/semi-private ward. The nurses seem overworked and can''t spend lots of time on each patient. A friend of mine has had five dcs, managed to bf four of them but ff the fifth because she didn't get any help with bf. That child was the only one she had on a public ward, with the others she had a private room.
You do need VHI/Quinn/ Aviva to go either private or semi but tbh you may want to check out if you will be covered if you take out insurance now; I may be wrong but think you have to be a member of VHI for quite a while before they will cover a pre-existing condition and I am not sure if they count maternity in this?
if you are going public, then I second what someone else said about the domino scheme, have known a few women who did this and they were very happy with the care and following my own experience of public wards, I think it is likely to be better than that! If I could have natural deliveries that is probably what I would do.
I did read a few threads on rollercoaster.ie which suggested The Coombe is not very clean but this was quite a while ago so don't know if it's still the case. Never had any problems with Holles St in that way.