She becomes one of only three female fighters in the history of the Olympics to retain their titles, along with Nicola Adams and Claressa Shields.

he has also ascended to a rare pantheon of Irish athletes. The Dublin native joins rowers Fintan McCarthy and Paul O’Donovan, and hammer thrower Dr Pat O’Callaghan in the select group of Irish athletes who have successfully defended an Olympic title.

Harrington’s success also topped a week of scarcely believable success for the athletes in green at the Paris Games.

As of yesterday morning, Ireland was positioned above some notable sporting superpowers in the medals table, including the likes of Sweden, Spain, and Brazil. Those countries are likely to hoover up more medals in the coming days, but it is an incredible achievement for such a small country to be in this position over halfway through the Games: At one point, Ireland was the only country in the top 12 of that medals table not to have hosted the Games.

None of this should distract from the focus on Harrington today, however, and her achievements deserve to stand alone and be saluted. It is also worth noting that after winning her gold medal she chose to visit a care home next to the Olympic Village, a gesture which speaks volumes about her personality.

It has been some week for Irish sport. Will we ever see another one like it?

Fines ineffective as deterrents

Taoiseach Simon Harris and his family were threatened with violence in a post on Instagram.

Mr Harris has said he will not be deterred by such threats, but questions remain about the social media company’s handling of this incident — and what exactly the State can do about such incidents.

Meta, Instagram’s parent company, said it has removed the content for violating its policies and is investigating the matter, but the post was not removed for two full days.

If a threat of violence against the leader of the country cannot be removed immediately, what hope for ordinary citizens?

The lack of content regulation on such platforms is a serious problem for society, and Justice Minister Helen McEntee’s comments yesterday underlined a sense of powerlessness in this area.

Ms McEntee pointed to the appointment of an online safety commissioner and the establishment of Coimisiún na Meán as safeguarding initiatives, but the former clearly has no power to deal with threats such as that made against the Taoiseach if Meta is still investigating itself.

Mr Harris also referred to Coimisiún na Meán yesterday, saying it is to produce codes of conduct with the power to punish social media giants financially. However, their profits are so vast that even though they routinely receive fines amounting to hundreds of millions of euro — for breaching privacy laws or allowing adults to message children — those fines appear utterly ineffective as a deterrent.

However, his reference to directors of these companies being held “personally responsible” under the forthcoming new codes of conduct may be more significant.

If those new codes propose sanctions against those individuals, that may prove a far more powerful incentive for such companies to police the material on their platforms.

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Stark figures on housing

The ongoing housing and accommodation crisis took yet another twist in recent days. We learned that that there are now half the number of second-hand houses for sale in the country compared to 10 years ago, according to the property website myhome.ie.

While these are the figures of just one operator, they are still so stark as to cause concern. For instance, the company reports that there is a drop of 60% in the availability of second-hand houses in the Munster region alone, while the imbalance is also reflected in the fact that one second-hand house in four now on sale in the entire country is located in Dublin.

Given the scale of population growth in the country (conservatively estimated as an increase in population of 65,000 people every year) there is clearly immense pressure on those trying to secure a home.

As if that were not bad enough, Cianan Brennan reported here yesterday on a particularly cruel property game being played in Dublin.

Several house-buyers have reported issues in dealing with a Dublin estate agent, stating they have been involved in lengthy sales processes after going ‘sale agreed’ before discovering that the property in question had already been sold or promised to another party.

The Property Services Regulatory Authority previously dealt with a complaint about the same estate agent but took three years to conclude, with a partial finding of improper conduct and a warning given to the estate agent.

Yet another sign of a dysfunctional property sector.