The evening before Mrs Robinson re-opened one of Ireland's finest examples of 18th-century architecture, Nick Robinson celebrated modern Irish architecture as depicted in a glossy, colourful new book on the subject. Published by Prestel, and edited by Annette Becker, John Olley and Wilfred Wang, 20th Century Irish Architecture doubles as an illustrated history of some of Ireland's most interesting buildings, and the catalogue for an exhibition which opened earlier this month at the Deutsches Architektur-Museum in Frankfurt.

Mr Robinson was joined at the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland by Dublin's Lord Mayor, John Stafford, the British ambassador Veronica Sutherland, the Polish ambassador Mieczyslaw Gorajewski, German ambassador Karl Heinz Braun, president of the institute David Keane, and its general manager John Graby.

Looking on with more than a passing interest were Tanya Kiang, editor of Circa magazine; Homan Potterton, editor of the Irish Arts Review; Dorothy Walker (widow of Robin Walker, the architect of Irish Modernism) and her son Simon. Lending their academic opinions were Paul Larmour of Queen's University in Belfast and Loughlin Kealy of UCD. No amount of learning, however, can predict when the gremlins will strike, and Mr Robinson directed our attention to one howler in the book's text, probably caused by a rogue spellchecker. In its infinite, artificial wisdom, the computer determined that all Irish architects dream of winning the ultimate award: the RIAI Toenail Gold Medal.