Building a dream home but not at a nightmare price

Petra and Padraig Quirke are a heady combination.

She’s from Czech Republic, he’s from Ireland and they flit here and there, so they are used to “thinking outside the box”.

That ability to adapt provided the bedrock in their support for a new form of house construction — a low-tech way of building your own home for next to nothing and giving banks, building societies and other 30-year mortgage lenders the boot.