Charlotte Ryan speaks to architect Tadhg Casey about joining Cheap Irish Homes, what to look for when buying an old house and how we can bring vibrancy back to small towns and villages.
With season six of Cheap Irish Homes landing on our screens, Maggie Molloy is back helping house hunters on a budget find great value properties. In this series, she is joined by architect Tadhg Casey, who shares his knowledge of old buildings and finding the gems around the country.
From North Kerry originally, and based in Tralee now, Casey did not imagine a career on TV for himself, but says that when the call came, there could be no better fit for him than the beloved house-hunting show.
"It wasn't something that was on my radar", he tells me over the phone, recalling that it was a YouTube video of him talking about his co-working space in Tralee that drew the eye of the show's researcher.
"There was something right about it", he adds, saying that as someone who is on the more "practical" side of things, it was a perfect fit. "If you'd ask me before, if there was any TV show for architecture you'd go on to, it would have been genuinely the one I would have aligned to."
Growing up in Ballyheigue, Co Kerry, Casey says he always had a grá for small Irish towns.
"I always love them, and I'm always going around seeing how they could be better. And really, the first step in getting them to be better is to get people living in them. Some of the best value in the country now is in those towns and villages. There's amazing properties."
Recent years have seen more commercial properties, like pubs, in these smaller towns close for lack of customers, but Casey has a different perspective on that: "I think that's a change in lifestyle rather than population numbers."
"I think the answer to that is more people living in those villages, and you get a better quality life because you keep your pub or two, you keep your shop, you might get a coffee shop."
One of the biggest blows to small towns and villages, in his opinion, was the economic crash of 2008, when scores of people of all ages emigrated to find work or better lifestyles.
That said, in the years following the Covid-19 pandemic, many of those same people are moving home to Ireland, and often to those small towns and villages once more.
"I think people are coming back maybe from abroad or from Dublin or wherever they went in their 20s, early 30s. Some people come back in, and maybe where they might have grown up in the countryside, they have an appreciation maybe for a bit more urban space, and they're open to buying those properties for young families."
So what should people expect to find if they go house hunting in the countryside? The main benefit, Casey says, is value, but that can come with some challenges.
"The big plus is that, obviously, there's huge value to be got. Now, the negative, I think, for lay people who are not in the construction industry, is that it can be quite intimidating. The problems don't intimidate me as a professional. There's a solution to every problem. But a layperson, I think, can get thrown by a lot of damp or a lot of this or a lot of that."
He says to start with your survey report: "That identifies all the issues. You try and cost all the issues, and you're always trying to break it down into achievable steps. And then, if it's not achievable for you, you move on."
And if you've found a home you're interested in, what are the non-negotiables you should check for?
"Number one, is it structurally sound? And if it's not, is there a fix to the structural issue? Number two, is there a damp rising, or is there water coming in from anywhere? Then everything else, in my eyes, flows after those fundamental things. Your insulation, your thermal performance, your layout to get the sun at the best times, your interior design."
It is clear that Casey has a deep appreciation for these properties and the potential they hold. It is the sense of "permanence", he says, that sets them apart from other properties and locations.
"If you go to an old city or you're in an old house or there's an old town centre, same as going down the mountains. I think it's calming to know that things have been around that long. The people live lives just like your life. They live their life in the same place, and there was a rhythm.
"We're going around [with] the show, you're going to a house that's from the 1700s, 1800s, and there's an old fireplace. You think of all the people who sat around that and live their everyday lives; the conversations, the songs, the funerals, and the wakes.
"They were our people, they were our ancestors, it's our place, that connection with nature that they had. We're fortunate to have so much in modern life, but I think what we need to have more of is that connectedness to nature and to ourselves and simple things that ground us."
Watch Cheap Irish Homes at 7pm Thursdays on RTÉ One. Catch up later on the RTÉ Player.
