I was listening to Nora Owen on RTÉ radio deprecating the making of money out of the sale of her grand-uncle, Michael Collins’s hair lock, at an auction recently.

TODAY (December 2) is the bicentenary of the founding of the Society for the Education of the Poor in Ireland — a Protestant organisation aimed at providing non-denominational education with a values-in-common ethos, and without any attempt at proselytising.