The increasing tendency to sell property by tender has been criticised by Eddie Barrett, president of the Irish Auctioneers & Valuers Institute. Addressing the institute's annual dinner in Dublin last Saturday, he said the tender process had raised degrees of anger recently because in some quarters it was becoming more fashionable as a means of sale. "Some of us in recent times have had occasion to tender on behalf of clients to later discover that some vendors have a hidden agenda. Members should ensure that all processes used by them on behalf of clients are fair to everyone, including buyers."

Mr Barrett also criticised Government measures to deal with the housing crisis. He said the results so far were that the residential investment market was in disarray, rents were going skywards because of a lack of supply and the home holiday market had been decimated. The holiday home or second home market had been instantly exported to Spain and beyond. "This has created our latest export - our hard-earned currency giving added value abroad instead of the building jobs previously created in rural Ireland."

Mr Barrett said the student population had also got a raw deal when the Government, which only a couple of years ago encouraged the development of high-quality student accommodation, decided to tax it out of existence with a ridiculous policy on stamp duty. He said the current problems could only be solved by action on zoning, infrastructure and proper pre-planning of towns and cities.

Having too few planners and unhappiness in their ranks was anything but helpful. The problem was symptomatic of a total lack of Government foresight that had damaged the housing supply chain.

Laurence McCabe, world president of FIABCI, the international real estate federation, reminded members that a severe slowdown in the US economy, which is running the biggest deficit in its history, would hurt almost every national economy - the Irish economy in particular due to its open nature, he said. This would certainly be a serious setback for the property industry. He recalled that Professor Patrick Honohan, of the Economic & Social Research Institute, had suggested that if the Irish property "bubble" was to burst, we could see as much as 30 per cent clipped off house prices.