For the first time, Dublin's lord mayor will open next month's Horse Show. After last year's row, when the President, Mrs McAleese decided not to attend (she will be there this year), the RDS invited the capital's first citizen, Labour's Mary Freehill, to do the honours. On August 4th, she will progress from the Mansion House in an ornate carriage pulled by four black horses to Ballsbridge, accompanied by her sister Anne Dixon and Dixon's partner.
The new lord mayor will be moving into the upstairs three-bedroom apartment in the Mansion House in September, once she has made arrangements for her own house in Rathmines. But she won't be alone in the mansion: the housekeeper and her family reside in a separate section.
An occupational guidance counsellor on leave of absence from the National Rehabilitation Board, Mary Freehill is setting up millennium projects, establishing committees for the city's elderly and homeless. She voted for the O'Connell Street Spike - "a confident piece that makes a statement about our future" - and hopes it will go ahead once the Environmental Impact Report is submitted to the Minister for the Environment, Noel Dempsey. But the way things are going, she may not see it during her mayoralty.