Imagine you are on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? You have just played 50/50 on the question, "Which is the best asset class to invest in?" and you have been left with two possible answers - equity or property. Which do you choose?

You could always phone a friend. But if the friend you phoned was Mr Colin Hunt, head of research at Goodbody Stockbrokers, he would tell you the answer was equity. If, however, you phoned your friend Mr Killian O'Higgins, managing director of DTZ Sherry Fitzgerald, he would say property.

Such was the nature of the great investment debate, organised by Goodbody Stockbrokers and DTZ Sherry FitzGerald and sponsored by The Irish Times, which was held in Dublin recently.

The key question explored was - should you opt for the potentially high return on the sometimes volatile stock market or would your money be better tied up in the traditionally safe return from bricks and mortar?

Bricks and mortar is not only a safe investment, it is also a lucrative one, says Mr O'Higgins.

Looking at unit fund prices based on offer-to-offer performance, Irish property offered returns of 151.01 per cent, he said. By contrast, Irish equities came out at 114.31 per cent. General equities returned 99.09 per cent.

"The actual market is telling us that property is one of the best performing asset classes," said Mr O'Higgins.

Leverage, the acceptability of property as security and the ability to borrow against it are some of the key strengths of property, according to Mr O'Higgins.

"It gives you the ability to borrow very closely to its actual value - 90 per cent for residential and 75 per cent for commercial," he said.

If an investor bought a property for £1 million in 1991 - with 75 per cent of the deal funded by a loan, with the remainder in cash, plus an extra £80,000 for costs - the value of that investment would stand at £4.62 million today, he said.

"If you deduct the loan and costs of sale, the realisation would be £3.77 million for your £330,000 investment. That's 11 times your original investment. If you look at equities, you're talking about an average return to the order of 2 per cent across the board on the ISEQ index. The average property return from 1991 to 2000 was 7.78 per cent. Consequently, the banks will accept it as security. That link often appears to be non-existent in equities," he said.

Income returns from well-managed and strongly performing Irish public companies have been very low, says Mr O'Higgins, ranging from 0.9 per cent for Kingspan to 3.2 per cent for Barlo.

"When you look at that, what's your ability to get a loan in equities, and what's your ability to repay one if you do actually get it?"

In any case, Irish institutions are abandoning Irish equities, Mr O'Higgins said. "In the early 1990s, 65 per cent of Irish equities were held by Irish institutions. At the end of 2000, it was 17 per cent,"

But other markets cannot offer a better return, he said. The fact that minor mood swings create boom and bust conditions for equities means the market requires constant attention, he added.

"The Nasdaq lost 25 per cent, the Neuer lost 30 per cent and the Techmark lost 30 per cent last year," he said, adding that headline tech stocks such as Cisco lost 55 per cent and Microsoft lost 65 per cent.

"Did you lose 65 per cent at any stage last year in property? Absolutely not," he said.

The capital value of property will keep closer pace with inflation, according to Mr O'Higgins, and it also offers significant tax benefits, he said.

However, head of research at Goodbody Stockbrokers Mr Colin Hunt described property investment as the "Johnny come lately" of the Irish investment scene.

"Property has performed very well in the last three to four years but that's not very surprising because you're dealing with a remarkably positive backdrop," he said. "The truly remarkable thing is that even against this backdrop, equities still outperform, year in, year out. If you look at gilts, one of the most boring, very safe, very dependable investment vehicles, they have managed to outpace property investment in Ireland in the years 1970 - 1997.

"If you look at the position in the UK, here again you have equities at the very top. In the US, equities are at the top of the performance charts."

But equities offer far more than superior returns, he said. Flexibility is one of the other key advantages of equities, according to Mr Higgins.

"Liquidity is a very important consideration," he said. "If you want to sell your shares, it's very easy to ring your broker, make your instruction, the deal is executed, money lodged to your account, profits realised and safely locked away," he said. "You can invest in equities with reasonably small amounts of money. Equities are the punter's friend. If you want to change one stock for another, again you just have to give your instructions and the deal is done."

Diversification allows investors to reduce the risks normally associated with equities and also enables them to ride the economic cycle, Mr Hunt said.

"If the economy is on the up, you can invest in growth stocks, technology stocks," he said. "When things are looking hairy, you can go for stocks such as utilities and pharmaceuticals. If you think interest rates are going to fall, then go into financials or construction companies."

A balanced portfolio will allow the investor to avoid a roller-coaster ride, he said. Investing in equities also offers lower transaction costs and lower stamp duties.

"If you want to buy Irish shares, the Irish Government still charges what we consider to be an outrageous amount of 1 per cent. In the UK it is half of a per cent, in Germany it is nothing. If you want to buy a property as an investment, be prepared to part with 9 per cent of the total package," said Mr Hunt.

The stock exchange is also a highly efficient marketplace, giving you an almost instant ability to check the value of your wealth.

The leverage offered by property is a double-edged sword, he said.

"It's a wonderful gift when asset prices are increasing, but can be a terrible curse when asset prices are falling," he said.

Mr Hunt questioned the ability of the Irish property market to perform at the high levels of the previous five years and said Government policy could also have an adverse effect on a property investment. For social and political reasons, the present Government has introduced measures to stabilise property prices which it felt were appreciating too fast.

"The policy environment favours equities over property, and measures to date by the Government to calm the property market have not succeeded, so who's to say we're not to have a fourth, fifth or sixth slice of Bacon over the next couple of months," said Mr Hunt.

Commenting on the volatility of the stock market, Mr Hunt said property markets could also be volatile. "Both crash, but how quickly do they recover? For equity it is 48 months. For property it is 100 months." If you still cannot make up your mind which asset to invest in, perhaps you should ask the audience. A show of hands at the investment conference indicated a majority in favour of equities - but most of those probably also owned a house.