Many people who move to Dublin for work face a familiar predicament: they must decide whether to settle in the capital city or return home.
Lory Higgins and Sandra Redmond faced this dilemma when their second child was on the way. They were renting in Rathfarnham, while his family’s farmhouse in Monamolin, Rathnure, Co Wexford, sat empty. After he went to Dublin, his elderly father moved in with his sister, who built a new house close by.
“The house went to rack and ruin at that stage,” he recalls.
The farmhouse dates back to the early 1800s, and as a construction engineer, he knew the challenges ahead if they decided to make it their home.
“Sandra really wanted to keep the house,” he recalls. “I was 50-50 on it. I knew the condition of the house. It was of its time. There was no insulation. You had single-glazed windows and the chimney was about to collapse in on the roof.”
Lory Higgins and family: Kate (14), Liam (11), Lory, Sandra an
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