For thousands of children, due to return to school this week, at least the last weekend of their summer holidays was warm, dry and sunny.
Eireann spokesman said was an "indifferent" After mixed weather throughout the summer, the weekend brought hot and sunny conditions for events such as the Verve concert at Slane, the All-Ireland semi-final at Croke Park, and water sports including numerous sailing races, the Lower Liffey Descent canoeing event and the Liffey Swim on Saturday.
According to Met Eireann forecaster, Mr Michael McAuliffe, there was a perception that the summer was actually worse than it was. Summer 1998 was not "off the scale", he said. August had, in fact, been quite reasonable with average temperatures and rainfall.
Overall, it had been an indifferent summer, he conceded, but the real problem was that there was not a two-week period of dry, warm, sunny weather. Had that occurred, then we would be talking about a great summer.
It was also disappointing, he said, because so many of us remembered the summer of 1995, "the best ever".
Over the weekend temperatures were slightly above average at 20 or 21 Celsius. Eighteen degrees would be average for late August.
Unfortunately the weather will break, with wet weather slowly cross the country, reaching the east late today.
As a further sign that summer is sliding into autumn, there will be increased traffic tomorrow morning with children back at school and Gay Byrne, Marian Finucane and Pat Kenny on our radios this week as well.
Gay Byrne's first show of his last season will be on Wednesday. RTE has put producer Ronan Kelly in charge of a team that is hoping to produce some memorable radio for the last season of The Gay Byrne Show, which will end with his Christmas Eve show from Grafton Street, Dublin.