New (female!) member so go easy on me

I have a 56 plate Fabia 1.4 diesel, owned for nearly 3yrs and its been a fab car never let me down (apart from stupid driver putting petrol in it!) and I'm certainly a fan of Skoda's having had a felicia before.

My question is the car makes a squealing/whining noise only when you engage 1st from neutral and go to move off, no problems with any other gear changes and once it warms up the noise stops. It also feels as if its going to stall for a second before then moving off - I wouldn't trust it not to stall if I tried to pull out a junction fast when cold. To be honest I've kind of forgotten just how long its been going on (typical female!!) I think it started, intermittently back in the winter of 2009/10, didn't do it over the spring/summer/autumn, i.e. in warmer weather then started again last winter gradually becoming more constant so that now it has done it over this summer, and is getting louder now its getting colder!

I took it into my local dealer last April for a service and investigation - they scratched their heads, said the clutch/belts etc were all fine and that they didn't know, had emailed round the other dealers to see if they could suggest anything as a result of which decided to super glue (!!) something together and charge me £90 for the privilege! I can't remember off hand what they glued but have the invoice some where. It made no difference what ever they did, and I didn't take it back as couldn't afford yet more money to "not fix" the problem.

Sooo do you think this sounds like a clutch problem, I've tried watching the rev counter and I think it does drop slightly - but difficult to do so as it normally occurs as I'm trying to pull out of a junction so eyes need to be on the road not the rev counter!!

I'm asking now as the finance is due on it in January, I was happy to just pay if off and keep the car but now I'm starting to think I may be better off getting a new one, not sure what thou :'(

It has 61,000 also needs the cam belt doing and the front console bushings were an advisory on the last MOT (its passed 2 MOT's whilst making the squealing noise?!) so those two things alone the dealer garage has quote £500+ If it needs a new clutch then I guess I'm looking at about £1000 worth of work??? I do a fair amount of mileage (400 miles a week) so mileage will quickly mount up and in a years time I'll have a car with 80-90,000 on it and yet more work need doing!! :|

Confused as to what best too do :(

The rev counter often will drop a bit when you pull away. If you're putting enough throttle on to hold, say, 1500rpm with no resistance then obviously as soon as you add in the drag of the clutch, gearbox, and driven wheels then it's going to hold the flywheel back from turning as freely until the other components have come up to speed.

edit - And a standard clutch shouldn't cost that much IMO (unless the flywheel also needs replacing). ECP do standard clutch kits for 5 speed TDIs for under £200 I think, fitting is around 5 hours on a 1.9TDI (just had mine done for £180) so I would say if the flywheel is OK then it could even be sub-£500. The key is finding a good independent and a good parts supplier, the dealers are very expensive on labour and can only use TPS-supplied parts. For your use on a 1.4 which presumably is otherwise standard, then pattern parts from the likes of ECP could save you a fair amount.

edit again - misread what you were saying about prices, thought you meant £1000 for the clutch alone on top of the other work. Oops!