In many ways, the Ireland, well, certainly the Dublin, of February 2020, was fast becoming a hostile environment to do business. Driven by the housing crisis, living costs were rising rapidly. Meanwhile, record-low unemployment was driving up wage bills and reducing the pool of available staff to almost zero. A lot of media organisations were back up to boom-level pricing as they enjoyed frequent 100 per cent capacity on their inventory so there were few deals to be had for small businesses with low spends. Commercial space was in high demand and reaching unmanageable prices per square metre – unless…