It looks like a fair deal of the Christmas spend will be funded out of the proceeds of the Norwich Union flotation earlier this year. Brokers in Dublin are reporting substantial volumes of shares exchanging hands, with many punters cashing in their windfall of free shares.

Few brokers are likely to dissuade you from this course of action, with many taking the view that you will probably not miss out too much in terms of any future gains in the Norwich Union share price in the short term. Taking a longer term view, however, the shares are expected to perform well with continuing speculation about a possible takeover likely to support their value.