BY AUSTIN LYNCH

Fermanagh businessman and entrepreneur Sean Quinn has topped another poll of the country's richest people featured in a recent television programme.

The RTE programme, 'Ireland Top Earners', was hosted by Craig Doyle and was screened over the Christmas period.

Made in association with the Sunday Times Rich List, the hour and a half countdown focussed on the 50 businessmen and women who have made the greatest gains in the last financial year.

FIRST INTERVIEW

In his first interview, for the programme, in over five years Sean Quinn broke with his tradition of privacy to give viewers a glimpse of the exceptional commercial acumen that has propelled him to the top slot.

The show also featured an appearance by Darragh MacAnthony of MRI Overseas Property, a member of the younger generation of Irish business moguls, interviewed at his company headquarters in Marbella.

He talked about his joy at achieving a lifelong ambition by becoming the new owner of Peterborough United Football Club.

Also featured on the list were Denis O'Brien, the man who shook up Irish telecommunications in the 80s, brothers Kevin and Michael Lagan, who own one of Ireland's leading construction and property companies, Independent Newspapers proprietor and his Greek heiress wife Sir Tony and Lady O'Reilly, Michael Smurfit and family, Michael O'Leary of Ryanair, Harry Crosbie, who gave Ireland the Point Depot and pioneered the development around Dublin's docklands, and Liam Carroll, Dublin's most prolific apartment builder and one of the largest land owners in the country.

The show also opened the door into the lifestyle of the rich and successful, examining the latest trends in must-have items.

Works of art, fast cars and helicopters, which are just some of the desirables featuring on the shopping lists of Ireland's top earners.