Lord Inchiquin is to ask the High Court today to direct the return to him of 37 ancestral portraits that have hung in Dromoland Castle for decades before and since it became a hotel.

Lawyers for the head of the O'Brien clan, who this week secured judgment for €7.9m against a company controlled by businessman Denis O'Brien which reneged on a land deal, are now seeking to have the well known entrepreneur and other directors of the company made personally liable for the costs of the action.

IF Brian Boru himself had appeared in person, the assembled gawkers surrounding Dromoland Castle could hardly have been more surprised.

ON Sunday last, September 14, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, I was driving home from a holiday in West Kerry.