Tuesday in Dublin's Shelbourne hotel saw the last big public outing for Myles Lee, the outgoing chief executive of Ireland's biggest listed company, CRH. The cement giant presented its interim results: a cautious affair, of course.

Lee took the reins in gloomy 2009, and has had to oversee a massive cost-cutting programme. King-in-waiting is the current chief operating officer, Albert Manifold, who takes over in January. He sat at the top table on Tuesday, alongside Lee and finance director Maeve Carton.

Manifold (blue shirt, purple tie) already appears to be setting himself apart from Lee (purple shirt, blue tie). I lobbed a question at him about what he will do differently from Lee when he takes over, but hit a brick wall.

Manifold did confirm that there would “be no mad rush of blood to the head” in terms of cranking up its presence in developing markets such as Asia.

Lee said he would now have enough free time to “find out exactly how bad a golfer” he is.

We can also scotch the common notion that Manifold is Belgian – he’s true blue Dub.

So how long has he been preparing to take over? “Since the day I was born in 1962,” he laughed.

We all know they like to plan well ahead at CRH, but that’s stone mad.