Mr Jim O'Leary, of Davys, one of our foremost pundits, waxes most lyrical in his latest weekly comment.

"We have entered the Irish equivalent of La Belle Epoque," he writes, "a time to drink deeply and with abandon from the Horn of Plenty and to ignore the begrudgers and the book keepers".

While Mr O'Leary is neither a begrudger nor a book keeper, in his next sentence he does urge us all to completely "ignore the dismal scientists"!

Is Mr O'Leary trying to vote himself out of a job? Or maybe he considers himself a "jolly scientist".