Working as a carpet cleaner in Ireland

Instead of offering a tip today i thought i would share my thoughts on working in the cleaning sector in Ireland.
To begin with it is a tough market whether its cleaning carpets, windows, gutters or driveways there is a lot of competition and to be honest we cannot compete with the one man operators that are paying no tax or insurance so to be honest we do not try, Unfortunately for us we are living in tough financial times so for many cost is the bottom line, last week we saw a guy cleaning a sofa with a wet/dry vac that you can buy in argos cant compete for sure!!!
One  problem that we do encounter is that people are just not bothered about clean carpets, to give you an example , i was pricing a job last month in Dundrum Dublin an affluent suburb, it was filthy, but in two weeks they were having a wedding party in the house so they wanted it spruced up , my point is that if there was no party there would have been no carpets cleaned.
Are people in Ireland less concerned about hygiene and cleanliness, i dont know to be honest, but when it comes to carpet cleaning our experience is that there are alot more dirty carpets then there are clean , post your thoughts how is it where you are
www.cleanbrightcarpet.eu