With the telecom giants of the London market, Vodafone Airtouch, Cable & Wireless and BT taking a hefty tumble, Eircom followed suit in Dublin with the shares closing down 28 cents on €4.40. This is the bottom of Eircom's recent trading range and dealers believe that the share is unlikely to fall much further and may recover once it becomes clearer what Telia and KPN plan to do with their respective 14 per cent and 21 per cent stakes.

Elsewhere, the market was pretty humdrum ahead of results today from Smurfit and CRH. CRH recovered another 25 cents to €17.35 but Smurfit remains in poor demand and the share dipped as low as €2.28 before recovering to close three cents lower on €2.30. Bank shares were mixed with AIB up 8 cents on €8.23, Bank of Ireland down two cents on €6.07 while First Active jumped 15 cents to €2.35 ahead of results next week.

Ryanair was boosted by two factors - its imminent inclusion on the STOXX index and the two-for-one split which should make the shares more marketable. The shares closed up 30 cents on €6.80 and are well supported at that level.

Baltimore was boosted by its inclusion in Warburg Dillon Read's list of 30 preferred stocks and recovered some of last week's profit-taking losses. In London, the shares were up £3.25 on £105.75 sterling while the shares were up almost $9 higher in midday NASDAQ trading at just under $169. The best of the Irish stocks on NASDAQ was Trinity Biotech, which was 59 cents higher on $5.59.