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ROSS MAGUIRE IS a grown man who decided to chuck in his desk job for the chance to play with Lego every day.
Five years later, the business he and his wife Pauline started to teach kids the basics of engineering using the interlocking brick system had about 10,000 students coming through its camps and workshops.
“I was working a dead-end IT job, sitting in an office with no windows; I hated it but it was the height of the recession so you were lucky to have any job,” Maguire told TheJournal.ie.
Despite having only €1000 from their savings to invest in the business, the pair decided to launch after seeing how popular Lego workshops were in the US.
“The first class we did we had eight children, but within three months we had 110 children attending our classes each week,” Maguire said.
Their business, Learn it, which runs holiday camps, regular workshops and in-school programs, has grown from the humble investment to one which now owns some 500,000 pieces of Lego.
Pauline Maguire takes some students through their Lego paces.
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A toy you say?
Maguire said a lot of people still thought of Lego as a toy – but they missed the educational value of the 60-year-old building system.
“When you put a piece of Lego in a kid’s hands it changes the way they learn,” he said.
“There are very few things out there where you have to build your toy before you play with it – and learn at the same time. It’s something that’s been lost now in this digital age.”
The next step for the couple will be to franchise the business around Ireland and open up in the UK within the next 12 months, before hitting mainland Europe in the next two years.
“I like to think we did something pretty cool – we took the risk and we haven’t looked back since; I essentially get paid to play with Lego,” Maguire said.
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Right now 1/1000 or so is getting their house retrofitted at a quite astronomical coat. And good for them. But what if the majority in the future, by 2030 ideally; is everyone with a private house suddenly going to find ‘the money’ to retrofit?
And what I’d they can’t? What will be the ramifications? Pay more prop-tax, a slap on tbe wrist tax, sell up at a lower price and forced into the slavery of rent? Like trying to afford rent when you retire, what are the ramifications of NOT retrofitting, exactly? Please don’t inform me of grants – the home owner must pay the lion’s share.
Its like an ad from the government and Garys an actor, people cant afford to pay their mortgages and they peddling this rubbish , Ireland has little effect on the global climate crisis and yet they expect ye to fork out 50 grand to do up your house , just plant some lettuce on your windows be grand
Home energy upgrades are a complete racket that just line the pockets of contractors. We recently bought a house a few km outside the nearest town in Co. Wicklow. The house was circa 35 years old with single glazing, little roof insulation and an oil boiler. We got the windows and doors replaced (€28K) for security and comfort and insulated the attic (€6.5K) again for comfort and to hopefully reduce the heating bills. We looked at replacing the oil boiler but a heat source pump will cost circa €10K and for it to be any use, we need to insulate the walls. Internal is not a option due to the amount of time we’d be out of the house and the fact that a lot of the rooms are small so we can’t afford to lose 100mm of space. External costs between €40K & €50K. Estimates are that this would reduce our heaing bills by 1/3. Considering these are €3K p.a., that equates to a saving of €1K p.a. which means a 50-60yr payback. I’ll be long gone before that.
Liam Byrne.
Anyone who has the ability to spend tens of thousands on major retrofit suggested in the article is worried about €50 or €100 more on property tax.
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