How about the old addage, you get what you pay for.
Getting a website for under EUR2,000 is a waste of time for most web design companies in Ireland.
People always say that they want a 'simple' site and it shouldn't cost the moon, but consider this;
1. An initial meeting with the client, getting a feel for what they want, where they want to develop their site. What, if anything will they use as a measure of the success of the site. Giving general advice and best practices for implementing the site. Things like, asking the crucial questions about their target market. How are they going to get a return on their investment. Have they considered how people are going to find the site. Have they a marketing budget...... .... (1/2 day).
2. The site providers will then (if they're any good) spend at least another 1/2 day drawing up 3 or more draft designs to present back to the client. (1/2 day)
3. The second meeting. The client review. At this stage, the provider should try to lock the client down on a particular design. If they were any good at the start, they should have gathered enough assets and ideas together to have a good final guess of what the client would like. (again 1/2 day)
4. Having chosen the final design, with the obvious tweaking necessary, the supplier should then be in a 'cut up' phase of the process, where the design is cut and diced for the web, with optimizations etc. Any text and media such as images should be inserted at this stage. Again 1/2 day at least.
5. Staging release. This should be the final review with the client to ensure that they have met expectations, and have fulfilled their brief. Normally, the client doesn't take ownership at this stage. The supplier must now get hosting, email services, domain registration, and deploy the site to the new domain. Again 1/2 day.
6. Contingency. Anything from chasing up the client for media to work with, to chasing the client for payment. 1/2 day.
Above would be the minimum time I would expect a competent design agency to charge for the most basic of sites. That's 3 full days of work. Considering the fact that minimum wage in Ireland is €8.65 an hour, that 24 x €8.65 = €207. + VAT. + travel costs + domain hosting + domain registration. I'd put the base cost for a 1 man agency, without their own equipment, without the overheads of an office, heat, telephones, advertising, marketing etc. at €300.
Obviously the person would also need to be paid minimum wage.
Now, don't get me wrong, there are people who will do a site for less than €1k, but don't expect frills, support, and definetly don't expect them to be there next year when you need to change a few things.
To be a viable business providing quality web design services, I'd expect a minimum charge of €2,000 for a website, of the most basic functionality and quality.
Maybe that's just me.
If this budget is too much for people, do it yourself. I don't mean that in a dismissive way, it's just that a design agency will not be interested.
Paul.