Ellen Coyne: ‘Patrick O’Donovan and his cabinet colleagues are probably not overly keen to be the regime that priced Bluey out of Irish family living rooms’

Never has an event more eluded the mental calendars of Irish mothers than World Book Day. I tend to celebrate each year with a ritualistic curse on the imagination of Julia Donaldson, whose creations never seem to lend themselves to the kind of last-minute costumes favoured by harassed, working parents. This was quite clear to me the night before World Book Day 2025, when a vain effort to turn nude hosiery into Superworm yielded only a sinister bank robber aesthetic.

And so I turned wearily to the mass-produced, synthetic and decidedly non-homemade costumes I already have; trying to reassure myself that the only people who always remember World Book Day are those millennial parents who are still a little bit too into Harry Potter ..