There are of course long-established links between the Central Bank and Irish literature, writes Frank McNally.
Why, for decades, writers were hard currency in the Republic. That is to say, portraits of Joyce and Swift adorned the old £10 note at different times; and even Yeats's likeness was fumbled with in greasy tills, until the euro and its anonymous bridges replaced them all.
Yet it still comes as a surprise to learn (IT, Saturday) that, according to a website dedicated to identifying the working locations of people who amend Wikipedia articles, "[computer] users from the Central Bank have made hundreds of edits to entries about Irish poets, while also updating information on stamp duty and Special Saving Incentive Accounts."
The bank's interest in stamp duty would be fairly well known. Likewise its engagement with special saving accounts. But until now at least, poetry criticism has been a little-publicised aspect of the organisation's work.
The subject is not even mentioned on the Central Bank's website: apart perhaps from a veiled reference in the listed functions of the "Monetary Policy and Financial Stability" department. Those functions include providing advice "based on sound analysis".
It's possible that this covers such things as assonance, dissonance, internal rhythm, and sentence weight. But maybe that's stretching it.
More likely, the organisation's poetry function is just a vestige from the time when writers still featured on the currency. After all, a key part of any Central Bank's role is to preserve the integrity of bank-notes. The reputation of the old £20, for example, was inextricably linked with the reputation of WB Yeats; therefore any decline in the latter could damage trust in the former.
Swift is an even more apt case. As the pseudonymous Drapier, he once wrote a pamphlet satirising "Wood's Halfpence": a debased currency foisted upon the people of Dublin in 1722 by one William Wood, who had secured the licence through a massive bribe to the king's mistress.
Who better than Swift, then, to guarantee the worth of the old £10, while reminding us of the need for public confidence in a currency?
Whatever the reason, I think most people who care about literature will be happy that the Central Bank is carrying out this work, however quietly. Even if our writers are not legal tender any more, they remain the gold standard of Irish culture.
Only an institution as illustrious as the Central Bank can be trusted with the maintenance of their reputations.
It may be just a question of ensuring that what is written about them on sites like Wikipedia is accurate.
But I suspect the bank has a subtler and more influential role, making interventions behind the scenes to influence market price, as it were.
The stock of Irish writers rises and falls all the time, sometimes unduly influenced by chance events.
Yeats could be up sharply this week, on the back of strong demand in the US following his exposure on The Sopranos. Heaney might be slightly down, amid negative sentiment about whether hope and history will ever rhyme. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the Central Bank is quietly buying and selling, to ensure the long-term stability of the Irish literary values generally.
The gulf between high finance and poetry is not as wide as you might think, anyway. Both fields concern the interplay between human intellect and emotion. And if you think poets are more volatile than market traders, you obviously haven't been reading the business pages lately.
There were more violent mood swings on Wall Street last week than in the entire Oxford Book of English Verse. Reading the financial pages on Saturday alone was hard going.
It made Milton's Paradise Lostand Paradise Regainedlook like just another market adjustment, after a day of heavy trading.
On the other hand, I'm not so sure about the news that "a computer user in the Vatican" edited Wikipedia's Gerry Adams entry. Indeed, if I were Gerry Adams, I might be a bit nervous about this. For a practising Catholic, short of learning that your biog has been updated by St Peter himself, the Vatican must be about the most intimidating editor you could have on your case.
Admittedly, it could be just a bored functionary in Rome who made the changes. But the Vatican has historically claimed an exclusive relationship with the truth, which is not quite in keeping with Wikipedia's famously (or infamously, depending on your opinion) democratic approach to gathering information about its subjects.
When a computer user in St Peter's hits the key marked "save", it still has a special resonance.
Speaking of which, according to reports, the relevant changes to the Sinn Féin leader's profile involved deleting references that would have detracted from his image as peace-maker. Perhaps that just reflects the church's emphasis on forgiveness. Or maybe, like the Central Bank's non-literary work, this entry too falls under the heading of Special Saving Incentive Accounts.