Tanya Doyle lived all her life at 20 Harelawn Grove, Clondalkin, West Dublin. It was the Doyle family home. Their mother gone, and now left alone to raise one another, the house became the only icon of security that Tanya, her three sisters and her brother could depend on. Or that’s how she perceived it. In 2007 the house was sold, some 8 years after the death of Tanya’s mother and her father’s departure.

As Tanya’s sisters, one by one, left the house to start lives of their own, only Tanya and her brother remained. The decision came to sell the house. In the days before the house was sold, Tanya brought each member of her family, her father Ollie, her sisters Sarah, Tracey and Patrice and her brother Peter, back to the house to tell the story of their shared experiences, their impressions of each other and the different perceptions each of them had of the time they spent there together in their family home.

This profoundly moving and autobiographical documentary explores the ideas of change, progression and shared experiences in a family dealing with loss and illness. Tanya Doyle’s television directorial debut, it is an epitaph to a home and a life, as well as a startling attack on the clichés of west Dublin. Tanya Doyle takes us inside.

In The House we look out the window instead of in.