It's probably not difficult to make a sizeable profit building and selling houses in Britain and, especially, Ireland these days. But despite that, the half-year profits from Charles Gallagher's Abbey group were really quite excellent and the quality of the results is still probably not adequately reflected in the share price.

Housebuilding is still Abbey's core business and profits from the houses more than doubled to £5.9 million. Margins also got a significant boost with the doubling in profits coming against a 38 per cent rise in the value of house sales, with margins in the division up from 11.7 per cent to 18 per cent.

There is no sign of any clouds on Abbey's horizon and even the vague prospect of another rise in British interest rates has not dented confidence in the stock. Company broker Davy has responded to the half-year results with earnings upgrades of 10 per cent and 16 per cent for this year and next, bringing Davy's total upgrade for Abbey since March last year to 75 per cent.

Those earnings forecast of 24.8p for 1998 compares with Abbey's peak earnings of 32.7p at the peak of the British housing boom some years ago. And back then, Abbey did not benefit from an Irish housebuilding arm with an exposure to the biggest domestic housing boom in history.