THE news that the Duke of Westminster is to take a reported 50 per cent stake in the Quarryvale Centre in west Dublin has resonances that are not lost on someone with the Margin's knowledge of history.

It raises the prospect of the Duke becoming the first member of the British royal family to open a shopping centre in the Republic, if he is asked to cut the ribbon.

It is a task at which members of that royal family most certainly excel and may have the desired effect on those Castleknock residents of a certain tradition. However, it seems more likely that the Duke - one of the richest men in Britain - will follow the precedent set by his ancestors of being an absentee Irish landlord.