Cost of having a baby in Ireland

[Ballygowenwater]

Hi there,

We currently live in England and have one child but are planning both a second child in the near future and a move back to Ireland and I’m trying to understand what the costs would be for the actual having a baby part a c section will be required.

Anyone any clue?

Free if you're a public patient

All maternity care..Gp visits and hospital antenatal/delivery (including sections), postnatal care is free for everyone if you go public. If you decide to go private you will have to pick a consultant. Their fee can be anywhere from €2500-4000 depending on consultant. You would need to have private health insurance which would cover hospital costs..surgery, anaesthetics, room etc.

Are you an Irish person moving back to Ireland?

@okpedro yes I am but it’s been quite a while since I lived there.

That’s great to know thanks, I’ve done loads of googling but could only find info on private care.

I had my child ten years ago and paid €4k for private care. Friends had similar care free of charge as public patients.

It's free as a public patient and the care is very good. I have just had my third baby and couldn't fault anything. If you go private your health insurance will pay for the hospital and you pay the consultant fee which is normally about 3k and if you go private without health insurance (which would be madness) then you are looking at a massive bill.

Free if public.

I had our first dd in the uk so didn’t expect it to be free over here.

We do have private health insurance now but got it after the second was born.

Main difference is that you’ll see either a consultant or someone working under the consultant for your appts. The wait times at the hospital can be long but if you’re eligible for the domino scheme its worth doing. I wasn’t so had to go to Holles street for all appts and wait. But get there early and you’re fine.

I did pay for private scans though as I was refused to be told the sex, and they raised a few concerns about length of baby which private scan said there was no issue with.

Research the hospitals though. All are pretty stretched. I found the labour process better over here than the uk. And I found the aftercare Better here than UK in terms of getting on with it when in hospital. They give excellent help for breast feeding and if you can’t/don’t want to bf -I found it less pressured than uk. (I wasn’t allowed bf due to dietary issues).

It's a different appointment process than in the UK I had my first two in the UK and I'm having my third now in Ireland. I am very rural though and the hospital is busy but I'm 15 weeks and still waiting on my first appointment. I assume going private you might get more appointments maybe but from the information I've got I'll only be offered the one scan if I'm low risk and the appointments are few and far between.

I had one in the UK and the staff refused to tell me the sex but I had my 2nd in Ireland and was asked if I'd like to know the sex at the scan appointment and I was delighted to find out what I was having.

Also worth noting that not all hospitals do the 20 week anomaly scan as standard. I had my 3 at one of the bigger hospitals and were surprised that the only scans offered as standard were the 12 week scan and the 37 week scan.

As above, free for public care, maybe €4000+ for private, but there is also a semi-private option at approximately €1000 if you have insurance. You see the same consultant each time etc.

Combined care with GP and maternity hospital is common and all GP visits for the pregnancy are covered (free) under the state scheme.

I went semi private and it's a complete waste of money. The benefits never materialized (there were no private rooms available for example) and what's the point of consultant contact in a regularly progressing pregnancy? If you run into difficulties, then they'll bring in senior doctors regardless.

Either fork out for private or go public.

Where will you be based? I had my first child in London and second in Dublin. I was very impressed by the standard of care I got in Ireland (I gave birth in the Coombe, highly recommend it).

Also semi private only exists in the Dublin hospitals. Outside of Dublin it's public or private only