The Man Who Knows Property paid a flying visit on the day before the Budget. He has been so busy abroad, that Dublin Airport has become just another terminus, though more penitential. I suggested he take up residence at Bewley's Airport Hotel, but he found that too close to reality to be funny.

Most of our ancestors were nomads, but in his case, he is closer to his travelling genes, being rarely in one country for more than a week. When I told him he was a "genetic recidivist", he looked alarmed before realising it was not a criminal offence. His mind was on other things . . .

His property interests take him, in any one month, to five or six countries, where he is building, or buying or selling property. He - and his staff - have built bits of the newly emergent countries of Eastern Europe, from dachas in forests to downtown business centres which are already trading, even before the particular country has formally joined the euro.

The dachas in the forest are a concession to the communist pasts, when only Party apparatchicks could afford - or be gifted - the use of isolated, expensive holiday homes. The bulk of the proletariat was denied such comforts. So much for equality.

Now, the new rich of these newly capitalist countries are queuing to buy: there is a ready market for dacha-style villas, expensive by local standards. Think ranch-style housing in Ireland of the 1970s and you get the picture. Say Westminster Lawns as a marketing ploy that appealed to those who tweaked their forelock to a colonial past. New Money, of course does not care, as long as it's not a Gaelic name they'd be embarrassed to pronounce badly. And enough space for his-and-hers 4x4s in the drive and a Jacuzzi upstairs plus rooms for the Eastern European maid and au pairs.

And no, he said, when I joked about that, his new apartment campus in Ukraine, is not called Leniniski Prospept.

"Do you want to get me shot?" he asked, "saying things can be tough enough as they are, paying off the right people for road permissions and the like."

Of course, coming from Ireland, he had a head-start on how the system worked. "Another one up for Paddy," he laughed.

He thinks the Irish are ahead of the game, buying in these territories, because of their experience after the Republic joined the EU.

When the "'commie countries get the euro", he forecasts similar uplift in property values. So what brought him home then?

His Irish sales had taken a downturn in the past few months, because of the great national focus on stamp duty in the Budget.

He viewed it all with mild risibility. "There was a slow-down coming here anyway. My sales figures told me that, so this Budget business is only a peg to hang a hat on. A bit of reality is entering the market, which is no bad thing.

"I told to my staff in Dublin to get the vendors knock 20 grand off the new houses and 50 off the second-hand ones - or don't take the business. Guess what - we've had a steady drip of sales in November, when most agents sold only a few properties. Of course the sellers will tell lies about the prices - they won't admit they settled for less in order to get a sale before Christmas."

Will he stay for the so-called festive season? With a nod to a domestic past that's a closed book, he said: "I don't think so - my family are all grown up and the wife has her own life. I think I'll be looking down some strasse in Berlin towards the Brandenburg Gate and wondering how the hell did I get here?"