But in a few years time they will be needed. Forward planning.

The problem was relieing so much on it. With our tax system based on it. We Irish were always going to go Bull McCabe and build loads of houses. The problem was relying on it.

Prices went from the standard income multiple of 3 or 4 up to about 9 over the last few years. Nothing actually changed to justifiably cause this. The immigration was matched by the rate that new houses were built. We are a quite sparsely populated land.

This madness caused the emigration which we’re going to see, which will free up more property. I’m not complaining as my rent is coming down!

The Irish people stopped working a few years ago and just partied on borrowed money ever since. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve been in recession since about 2002 but have papered over the fact by borrowing money from abroad to import goods from abroad because we’re too lazy to make them ourselves – and too lazy to make any suitable exports in return.

We’re in damage limitation mode now, which means that it’ll be difficult to judge whether, for example, 10% unemployment is a good outlook or bad outlook from this juncture.

While it does appear that the government’s finances are in reasonable shape, with national debt being relatively low, it is only half the story. Irish people and banks are up to their eyeballs in international debt. The government manipulated the market by refusing to apply capital gains tax to property and therefore is to blame for the current mess, even if its own accounts are (currently) not looking as bad as they did in the 80′s.

We’ve been wasting so much of our labour building houses to the extent that we now have more empty houses than we did in 2002 (thanks Conor). You don’t need to be study the economy to see that’s unsustainable. If we had all our population working on building sites we’d starve to death in weeks.

The full impact of the collapse of the construction industry will not be felt for another 12 months at least. Equally, the effect of record high energy prices is only now beginning to work its way down the supply chain.

In all likelihood, 2009 and 2010 will be significantly worse than 2008.

The picture in 3-6 months time will be interesting.