Róisín Murphy: 'People who have kids with special needs need more support'

The architect and Home Rescue host tells us how good design transforms lives and why some families' stories are extraordinary

Thu, 04 Nov, 2021 - 20:36

Eve Kelliher, Home Editor

Our homes have become our fortresses more than ever before.

Architect Róisín Murphy, fresh from shooting the latest series of Home Rescue, agrees: “The home really is the castle now and that’s a concept that’s here to stay.”

But, behind the ramparts, Róisín has met more homeowners than ever that have moved her.

Because the architect cares deeply about the human element of the tales she and builder Peter Finn and their clutter-busting crew discover once they knock on the doors.

Architect Róisín Murphy and builder Peter Fin

“There are people living extraordinary lives, and on different terms to everyone else,” she says, as Home Rescue: The Big Fix started on RTÉ2 this week.

“One of the big issues in Ireland is people who have kids with special needs need more support. For me, enough is enough. Some people — their stories are so extraordinary. They would put some of our ordinary everyday lives in context.

“You really don’t hear enough about supports — and there are more supports for people in other countries.

Every day, parents are living these extraordinary lives.”

Róisín was glad that Home Rescue: The Big Fix has now been expanded into an hour-long show, as it allows the team to spend five days instead of three on each project.

Because a highlight of the entire series for the mum of three was working with Marie Kelly and Dan Stevens and their twin sons Max and Cuinn at their house in Kilcock on the Royal Canal in north Kildare.

“I would have liked to have spent the entire series with this family if I had been allowed,” she says.

Max and Cuinn both have autism, and their home simply does not work for them or their parents.

The former living room now serves as a bedroom and the kitchen is dark and cluttered, with space for just one person to use at a time.

But the entire house was also overflowing with joy, she adds.

What struck me about this family was, there are people who work at a different level and it’s all day, every day and they have a lot of love, and a lot of joy, that’s what this family taught me. But, God, Jesus, they could do with a digout.”

Marie and Australian expat Dan met in 1998 in Dublin.

“I was selling books and you could see he was pretending to be looking at a book,” she says.

He asked her to marry him the day they met. “I said yes, but you’re going to have to ask me again a few months from now when we know one another better,” she says. Three months later, Dan moved to Ireland for good and they tied the knot in 2000.

Five years later they were joined by Max and Cuinn.

The past decade has been a particularly tough one for the family. Serious health problems have put Dan out of work, leaving Marie the sole breadwinner as a part-time instructor for young adults with special needs.

The rest of Marie’s time and all of Dan’s is spent caring for Max and Cuinn. Max has severe autism and Cuinn has mild to moderate autism.

“We have no life,” says Dan. “We are like people working in a factory and the job we have in this factory is caring for these two boys.”

The sunroom/living space has become something of a utility room.

Downstairs, the house simply doesn’t function well, especially the cluttered kitchen with two ovens on their last legs and no room to cook.

The yellow-painted sunroom has morphed into a utility room, and the living room is now Dan’s bedroom, packed with furniture including an unused piano.

“We had great dreams for this house but the house went on the back burner,” says Dan.

Architect Róisín hatches a plan to rescue the house by rejigging the layout. “They’re up against it every day from the moment they get up in the morning to the time they go to bed at night; it’s full-on,” she says.

Her plan involves swapping the kitchen and sunroom but, with a tangled legacy of wires and pipework to relocate, builder Peter and the crew face a mammoth challenge.

With a whole new kitchen and living room to create from scratch, a new home to be found for the old piano, and a massive sorting job for Dan, Marie and the clutterbusters camp out on the green. “We tried to start decluttering a while ago but we just don’t have the energy,” says Dan.

The most ambitious Home Rescue yet involves emptying three construction tents.

“Dan and Marie’s house is very moving. I mean, you walk in there and you sense the love in the house but you also sense the chaos in the layout. Nothing is going right in the layout,” says Róisín. “So, if it’s wrong, you’re facing that problem, all day every day.”

A shower room opens into the kitchen — a room Róisín describes as “a prison” as it is so confined.

The family would love to eat together but there is no space. “We can’t get it wrong, this is heart surgery. The kitchen is the heart and we’re doing a transplant,” says Róisín.

If it’s not high-risk it’s really only decoration — and there’s nothing wrong with decoration: It’s an important part of design. Really good design is about changing patterns of behaviour to improve them.”

She and Peter transform the dark, broken kitchen and the gloomy living room, and reinvent both spaces.

“I can be quite quirky and eccentric but I wanted it to look like a show house,” says Róisín. “I wanted panelling and I wanted it to be relatively conservative and I wanted to do it for them.”

Of her mission on Home Rescue, she adds: “I am really devoted to the job. We cajole and boss people — we only have a few days and this is not just for the telly, it’s also people’s homes so I want to make sure the homeowners get bang for their buck.”