Room To Improve fans deem latest episode ‘out of touch’

They didn't hold back

Sunday night saw the return of the 17th season of the RTE series Room To Improve, hosted by Dermot Bannon.

During Sunday's episode, Dermot and quantity surveyor Claire Irwin headed out to Clonsilla in the west of Dublin in an effort to help Deirdre and Kieran Kelly ‘downsize’ to another home.

The couple planned to move out of their spacious house and into the first home they had rented out for the past 20 years.

Deirdre and Kieran want to continue to host their friends and family, as well as have a 'man-cave', resulting in a €275,000 renovation.

Even though the couple were pleased with the renovation job, viewers have been heavily criticising RTE for being 'deeply out of touch' with everyday renters.

One Reddit user shared: "I generally like Room To Improve, but tonight’s episode is annoying. The couple, the lady in particular, keeps mentioning how hard it is to keep a second house, but they have been renting it out since 2005. The mortgage is well paid.

"This is the entire problem with the country, people holding onto houses and playing the poor mouth."

Another added: "Not a penny put into the house that wasn’t absolutely required, but 'struggled' running their side business.

"I thought this as well when they said the kitchen was from 1991. Two battered chairs and a few plastic chairs from the 90s."

On X, people overall shared the same sentiment.

One person wrote: "I’d love to know who in RTE decided that, in the middle of a rental crisis, we need to show landlords who haven’t done a tap of work on the house for 20 years, now doing up the house…

"I dislike the idea that landlords can leave a house rot for 20 years (based on what we saw) and then have the national TV station give them a prime slot to show what they’ve now done."

Another agreed: "Just shows the state of the rental market. They didn’t put a penny into the rented house, paid off the mortgage with the rent and are now kicking out tenants to move back in. You couldn’t make this up."

A third added: "Ye wouldn’t have thought to update the kitchen for yer tenants at any point in the past 20 years?

"Ah lads, it hasn’t even been painted in the 20 years. Why are we giving these landlords a chance to show how little a s*** they gave for two decades!"