Even retailers have been infected by the optimism that has swept the Irish economy, if Ibec's Retail Industry Ireland conference in Dublin this week was anything to go by. Some of the brightest moments of the morning, however, were inadvertent. Conference chairwoman, broadcaster and publisher Norah Casey, made a delicious slip when she referred to Ibec's chief economist Feargal O'Brien as Feral O'Brien. Ibec's main adversaries, those pay rise-chasing workers, might smile at that.

The conference had earlier been addressed by former senior Tesco executive, Baroness Lucy Neville-Rolfe.

Paul Neeson, the head of retail at the DAA, later gave a presentation about the overhaul of the shopping facilities at Terminal 1. Neeson, a chipper Northerner, opened with a light-hearted quip about the age of those gathered. "Look at us," he said. "We're a combination of people with grey hair, no hair and . . . [looking at the Baroness] blue hair." I thought it was funny, anyway.