Following the events of the weekend, when a Ryanair flight was effectively hijacked and diverted to Minsk, Belarus suddenly came into the nation’s consciousness.

One of the snippets gleaned was that the Irish honorary consul to Belarus is a Wicklow wool merchant.

Vincent Pierce has served in that capacity since long before President Alexander Lukashenko developed a vice-like grip on the former Soviet state, and represents the people, “not the government” of Belarus.

Indeed, I understand that Pierce, who has long-standing business interests in the country going back to the 1980s, flew home from Belarus on the day the flight from Greece to Lithuania was forced to land in Belarus.

It really is a small world.