The Ryan Review

ECONOMISTS are never happy. I’m not sure if they’re born that way, but they don’t call it the ‘dismal science’ for nothing.

When things seem to be going well, their instinct is to slam on the brakes. Likewise, when all seems lost, they’re talking down the bad news. None of them ever seem able to agree with each other, either. As George Bernard Shaw observed: “If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion.”

So what are we to make of the latest CSO house price indicators, which show prices up 12.7pc year-on-year, the fastest annual rise since May 2015. “The momentum in residential property prices remains formidable,” says KBC’s chief economist.

Yet Central Bank Governor Philip Lane, the economist’s economist, immediately warns of another property crash.

Blaming increasing housing supply (I know, I know; the rest of us think that’s a good thing), he says there’s a ‘material risk’ the market will fall in the next couple of years. He also cited the fact that fewer people can now afford a mortgage and added “our rules are beginning to bite more severely”. He meant this as a good thing.

It’s confusing. What is true though is that people often don’t do what economists expect of them and the entire landscape can change at the stroke of a politician’s pen and the abacus will have to be dusted down once again.