Seated next to a stranger on an aircraft it's difficult not to hear the conversation, even as the plane is preparing for take-off. He spoke succinctly, about building plans and bank loans: "Tell Ken to tell Ian at the bank the pp is through, then get Monica call me three o' clock, your time."

As we were on the Malaga commuter run, I imagined Monica would be calling him in the afternoon, in his villa by the golf course. I did not imagine "pp" meant the parish priest giving the green light for a community project. He closed his mobile, in the confident knowledge other people would spend the afternoon working for him in wet and windy Ireland. I recalled an architect's summing-up of developers as "the ability to get other people do the work. They can't sing or dance - yet they create massive buildings and change the landscape. Out of nuttin'."

He spoke from a lifetime's experience. "They start with a flat or two and look at them now, changing the face of Budapest or Warsaw, after they wrecked Dublin. How do they do it?" He was speaking querulously of his clients, prime movers of those massive urban changes in our time. Yet without commissions from developers, he would not have designed some iconic buildings of which he is proud.

He mimicked one developer as "a little fella, suits always too large, drives the biggest 4x4 this side of Iraq, speaks with a lisp and, because his vocabulary is limited, he effs and blinds all the time, but has bankers eating off of his plans. How does he do it?"

I measured my airline companion - no, too tall. I ruminated about the few developers I have met over the years - not the most charming of people, nor the most stimulating of company. They have no need to be - anymore than a traffic clamper has to be the soul of courtesy or play Mozart on the trumpet.

A developer, in possession of the deeds to develop a property, need not recite Yeats to the foreman - or architect. All he needs it to persuade bankers to lend him money. Now, of course, it makes sense for bankers to advance say, €10 million at 5 per cent interest per annum, to fund a project based on rising property prices and - crucially - planning permission.

The bank will get an income of €500,000 a year for a few years, on the back of that lending. Think how many PAYE account holders and salary earners would be needed to earn that much for the bank - hundreds of thousands of its "ordinary" customers, at least. But, hey presto, by lending to a developer, the bank provides itself with a substantial income at much less input of time and labour.

At the end of the day, if the market slows, the bank will have the land as security. Even if it has to sell the unfinished project, the bank will come out of the deal with huge profit, and its senior "negotiators" will be smelling of roses at annual report time.

I was ruminating thus, when my fellow passenger tipped back his seat for a snooze and asked me to tell the hostess not to disturb him.

I was about to nod off myself, but waited until I caught her eye. I did as I was asked, and I'm not even a banker.