ALRIGHT, WE’VE had the spectacle of a builder who made his millions on the back of the Celtic Tiger abandoning a scheme to upgrade the living conditions of workers upon whose labour the prosperity was created – or so it appears to anti-developer sentiment. Anything else that tells us the times are a changin’?

How about the capital’s leading estate agent giving over its trophy location to the watering hole of the chattering classes? How about the large banner in Dublin’s Merrion Row, where the politicians and mandarins sometimes take a break for a latte, announcing the one-time offices of Sherry FitzGerald have been taken over by The Unicorn café/restaurant. Yes, the same eating place where many a political plot was hatched and many a judicial indiscretion recorded, has extended its culinary empire over Sherry Fitz’s art deco offices.

Of course, Sherry Fitz prospered in the boom, paid senior staff lots of dosh and bought two upmarket London estates agencies from its spare cash. But as a sign of the times, they have retreated from Merrion Row. What, rents getting too high for estate agents?