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05th Oct 2019

‘It’s about the characters’: Dermot Bannon on why Room To Improve shouldn’t end

Olivia Hayes

There was a lot of discussion surrounding Room To Improve this week.

The home improvement show was criticised due to its huge budgets when many people are unable to afford to buy a home or rent a room in Dublin.

However, Dermot Bannon told FM104 that he has questioned the future of the show, but can’t deny that it’s a great success.

He said: “It’s about the characters, it’s about their journey. The budgets are the budgets – I’m asking this question all week – should we just stop making it?

“If I did a €20,000 extension for someone’s house and spent an hour talking through it, nobody would watch.”

He continued on to say that he improves every property he works on by moving it from GD ratings to A rated homes as well as changing all heating systems to renewable sources.

He continued: “There’s very few houses we do on Room To Improve now where it’s not really a room to improve, it’s the whole house.

“We could divide up the show and say we’ll only show you half the house and this bit – the extension cost this amount – but that’s been a bit disingenuous.

 

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“If somebody applies and they say ‘I’ve got a budget of €350,000’, they’re great characters, you love spending time with them, and they’ve got a really interesting project, am I gonna say no?”

Room To Improve will back on our screens at tomorrow night at 9.30pm.