As the Dáil reconvened to enact emergency coronavirus legislation, as the first death was recorded in Northern Ireland, and as oral and practical exams for Junior and Leaving Cert students were cancelled it might be all too easy to fret, to be sceptical about our capacity to overcome this threat.

IT is difficult to understand how, in September 2008, less than three days after the country’s two top finance watchdogs – the Central Bank chief John Hurley and financial regulator Patrick Neary – told Government that Ireland’s banks were not facing a debt or cash-flow crisis that a €440 billion deposit guarantee was deemed unavoidable.

A half a century ago, a swashbuckling playboy, the 17th Marquis de Portago, rode Garde Toi to third in the Cheltenham Gold Cup. But that was only one chapter in a remarkable sporting life. Simon Lewis reports.