It's not talked about, but it is at a subconscious level.

They want to be seen as successful in all areas of their lives.

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"They want to inspire a little bit of envy in their friends, so their mates can say 'God, he's done well for himself, I want what he has'." One 65-year-old farmer with a lot of land contacted the agency and thought he would be able to snap up a woman much younger than him because a neighbour in his 50s married a woman who is in her 30s.

"He thought that was the norm, but we had to tell him that was the exception rather than the rule," said Ms Maycock.

IRELAND’S ATTITUDE TO dating and, in particular, online dating has changed.

Research compiled by Ipsos MRBI shows that, as of May, about 5% of Irish people aged 15 have a Tinder account – that is about 180,000 people.

Ms Maycock told the Sunday Independent: "There are guys in their 50s and 60s coming to us looking for a woman 20 years younger and we have to tell them there is absolutely no circumstances that dream is going to happen, but maybe we could look at someone five or 10 years younger." She added: "Quite a few guys are in competition with their friends.

There's something about Christmas that makes us feel nostalgic.

While most of us think of the '90s as our golden years, we really don't give the noughties the due they so rightly deserve.

They're in the genre of Brutally Honest Personal Ads (I've reported on examples of this genre before).

In this case, I'm guessing that the ads, if they really did appear in the Dublin News, were meant to be tongue-in-cheek (though I haven't seen the paper, so I can't really tell).