It is not necessary to be as sharp as PJ Mara was to imagine an election planner agreeing a date for the ribbon-cutting at this week’s opening of Ireland’s longest road span bridge.

John F Kennedy’s daughter Caroline is set to visit the sites of the Fitzgerald family homesteads in Co Limerick, where fresh research shows JFK’s great grandfather and great grandmother grew up as neighbouring first cousins.

PRESIDENT John F Kennedy’s sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who carried on the family’s public service tradition by founding the Special Olympics and championing the rights of mentally disabled people, died early yesterday surrounded by relatives at a Hyannis hospital. She was 88.