Michelle O’Donnell Keating is not a household name in Ireland, but perhaps she should be.

HAVING wrung its hands at the prospect of spending €30 million refurbishing Lissadell House, the ancestral home of Countess Markiewicz, the Government turned down the chance of buying it for the nation.

THE Government was roundly criticised by local politicians yesterday for its failure to buy Lissadell House, the Sligo stately home where Countess Markievicz and her sister, poet Eva Gore Booth, spent their formative years.