AROUND THE BLOCK: THERE WAS no surprise this week to see that the Permanent TSB appears to be quietly dropping its house price index.

Its new business has seriously slipped over the past year or so because of the extra cost of raising funds overseas. With its overall business way down, it hasn’t been able to come up with a realistic sample size of new mortgages to allow it to gauge the overall market. In future, the company will carry out a quarterly review but the market has been ignoring its index for a while. What’s needed is an independently produced straightforward register of house prices based on actual sales.

CIF director general Tom Parlon (pictured) was quick to demand just such a service. “Until the information deficit is addressed we will have to rely on conjecture about what is happening in the housing market, which is potentially very damaging for the economy and, in the current environment, could actually delay Ireland’s economic recovery.”

Meanwhile down in sleepy Navan, a team of civil servants continues to staff the National Property Services Regulatory Authority – a toothless, expensive quango with no legal status. Perhaps it could be given the responsibility for assembling these facts which, after all, are freely available in Northern Ireland as well as other parts of the UK.

However, a similar service cannot be provided here until the dreaded Data Protection Act is amended to allow prices to be published.

Housebuilding may be down in the doldrums right now but it won’t stay there forever.

Parlon rightly stresses that, internationally, construction is an important driver, and indeed perception driver, of domestic activity. “It is vital that when people comment on what is happening they do so on the basis of reliable statistics.”