Inherited wealth has brought home to us the inequality of Irish society

THE man is out to ruin me. All I’m doing is sitting in my palatial home in leafy south Dublin, minding my own business and the steady rise in the value of my property. Which is quite a relief, as you can appreciate, given I paid at least a third more for it than it’s currently worth.

Not that it really matters, because the house I sold before I bought this one was just as spectacularly over-priced. And, more to the point, the house my mother sold, just as the bubble was bursting, annihilated my mortgage and that of my siblings.

And Thomas Piketty wants to take away my just desserts. Hell, I worked for that inheritance. I visited my mother in her comfortable nursing home at least twice a week. Sometimes, I brought her a packet of polo mints.