Andy Farrell praised England after ending his side's Grand Slam dream and says his focus will quickly turn to retaining their Guinness Six Nations title.
Marcus Smith dropped a goal with the clock in the red to earn Steve Borthwick's men a shock 23-22 win at Twickenham.
The defeat ended Ireland's ambitions of becoming the first side to do back-to-back Slams in the Six Nations era.
Ireland led 12-8 at the break and were ahead deep in stoppage time but England, beaten by Scotland in round three, were not to be denied.
"To cut a long story short, I actually thought England deserved to win," Farrell told RTÉ Sport.
"We fought back unbelievably well against the run of play sometimes. Certainly coming back in at half-time like that. And again in the second half, finding a way to get ourselves in front.
"I thought England deserved it with the pressure that they had and created, so congratulations to them.
"Look at the quality of the players that they've got.
"Certainly when you're coming off the back of a defeat it tends to concentrate the mind a little bit - hopefully it does for us next week.
"We always prepare for every game for everyone to be at their best.
"I thought they were super tonight, I thought they were physical, they were challenging on the gain line and played a nice brand of rugby as well."
Ireland are four points clear of England at the top of the table and can win the championship if they beat Scotland on Saturday.
"You talk about the Grand Slam stuff, well every game matters," added the former England dual code international when asked about overcoming the disappointment ahead of next weekend.
"We want to win everything and we've never shied away from that. Today was obviously one of those games that we wanted to win but that's life.
"You dust yourself down. We've been very good at winning and moving on to the next one.
"We've got to be really good at losing as well, making sure that we congratulate England tonight, have a beer with them.
"I thought they played really well so we've got to dust ourselves down tomorrow and make sure that we turn up with a smile on our face because we've got a championship to win next weekend.
"We said from the beginning that we'd like to be in with a chance of winning the competition on the last day and here we are. Look, the lads are realists, they'll learn the lessons quickly."
Captain Peter O'Mahony (above), whose games ended in the 58th minute after he was yellow-carded said Ireland's discipline let them down. They conceded eight penalties and a free-kick.
"We spoke about our discipline, obviously it was a big 'in' for them," said the Munster back row.
"I thought they were good and clinical at messing up our breakdown.
"We found it hard to get consistency in our phase play. I thought we struck quite well off set-piece but we didn't seem to get into our a lot of phase (play).
"Like as we said beforehand, it was a massive pressure match, pressure environment.
"They're a quality side and I thought they showed that in spades tonight with the way they defended, clinical in their attack and disrupted a lot of the stuff that we wanted to do."
Farrell appeared to exchange words with Borthwick at half-time but the head coach laughed it off when it was brought up at the post-match press conference.
"Just: 'How are you doing, Steve? Nice to see you again, not spoke to you for a long time'. All good," he said.
