‘We needed a bigger home with closed-off spaces’ Like many house-hunters, Fiona and Tony Walsh were prompted by the lockdowns of 2020 to consider swapping suburban living for a larger home in the countryside. Fiona, a trained scientist who moved to Ireland from the UK in 1999 to work in the pharmaceutical industry, has been working from home during the pandemic at the family’s three-bed terraced house in the Cork suburb of Rochestown. She and Tony have two daughters, aged five and eight. “The downstairs is all very open plan and I have a desk in the living area and there’s lots of noise,” says Fiona. “We needed a bigger home with closed-off spaces.”