Robbie Kelleher, Davy's head of research, is obviously no fan of Lex, the influential Financial Times comment column which has taken the view that our tiger economy is set to turn into a dead pussycat. Lex has joined a number of other British commentators in the view that the Irish property is about to burst and the Irish banks are going to be left with a raft of poorly-backed property loans.

The Kelleher view is at variance with Lex, and Robbie used this week's Davy equity book to forcibly advocate the contrary position. So why does Davy believe that the Republic isn't going to follow other boom-and-bust examples like Britain in the 1980s, Japan, Hong Kong, Boston and California?

For a start, the Republic's membership of the euro club means that there is no possibility of a credit crunch - a big increase in interest rates was one of the main factors of the bust that followed the boom in Britain and the other economies.

The Davy man also believes that there is no evidence that householders are leveraging on the basis of the equity they have built up as a result of the rise in house prices. Likewise, unlike the likes of speculative office development like Canary Wharf, most of the major office development projects are being built on a pre-let basis.

Davy differs from Lex in believing that the slowdown in the Irish economy will not come through a property bubble but through supply-side constraints such as labour shortages, overused infrastructure and also the deterrent effect to inward migration of rising house prices.