The Central Bank is not an institution noted for its openness. Confidentiality lies at the heart of much of what it does and its preferred course of action is invariably the quiet word rather than a resort to megaphone diplomacy.
It should come as no surprise then that the Bank should appear to agree in private with the OECD that Irish property prices are significantly overvalued, while its public utterances serve to paint a somewhat different picture.
Only last week the Bank issued an assessment of the stability of the financial markets in which it was relatively sanguine about the prospects for the housing market. The reason being the tapering off in the rate of house price growth. Contrast this with the claim by the OECD that only weeks earlier Central Bank officials did not demur when it posited - in private - that the market here is overvalued by around 15 per cent. These officials then cautioned against the putting of such a figure in the public domain for fear of destabilising the market, according to the OECD version of events, which has been challenged by the Bank
Presumably the Bank would explain such behaviour by reference to its overarching responsibility for the stability of the Irish financial system. The logic implicit in such a stance is that it is better that people continue to buy property in a potentially overvalued market than for the whole market to come crashing to a halt - or even go into reverse - because of a change in consumer sentiment triggered by the Bank stating publicly that many houses are not worth the huge sums people are paying for them.
The Bank could also argue that the best outcome - a soft landing for the market - is more likely to be achieved by not rocking the boat and letting economic growth, combined with slowing house price inflation eat into any element of overvaluation in prices.
However, it is to be hoped that the Bank did not discourage the OECD from making public its estimate of the extent of overvaluation. The organisation has a far from glorious track record of withholding information, often with disastrous consequences, in the interest of what it sees as the greater good. The Bank's knowledge of the goings on at the banks at the heart of the Ansbacher scandal is a case in point.
It is worth noting that when such high-handed behaviour has come to light - as it almost inevitably does - the damage to the organisation's credibility has been significant. The Central Bank should make public in an unambiguous fashion its own assessment of the extent - if any - to which property prices are overvalued.