The designer shamrock, be it tilted at any angle relative to the hypotenuse or stood on its head, is an anachronism and should be left to wither as a national marketing symbol. Brian Boylan, who heads Wolff Olins, a London design consultancy, tore the dear little bit of greenery up by the roots in a designer-speak address to the Marketing Society this week, arguing that clinging on to such traditional loyalties represented a country "more of the past that of the future". Continuing to give the sweet little weed gainful employment was seen as "moving forward, looking backwards". In a critical reference to the decision of the the Minister for Tourism, Dr McDaid, who stepped in to rescue the greenery from the coloured pencil brigade, Boylan said that the decision to replace the dancing ink blots of Bord Failte, subsequently retained by the Northern Ireland Tourist Board, meant that the joint marketing initiative was now "disastrously apart". Wolff Olins has produced corporate logos for AIB, Irish Life and Kerry Group.

Perhaps a compromise to the creative brouhaha lies in the rare four-leafed clover, a plant combining the politically-correct imagery of four green fields united and the easy, laid back resonances of an economy currently in clover. I hold the intellectual property rights to this visionary concept, but remain open to reasonable offers in four figures. Cheques please care of the column.