The Government's latest inept intervention in the housing market was underlined this week by the admission by Charlie McCreevy that the anti-speculative tax will have succeeded if nobody ends up paying it. "It is the first tax in the history of the State where its success depends on its yield being nil," he said during the debate on the Finance (No 2) Bill 2000. "It is the first time a Minister for Finance has introduced a measure where the purpose is to gain a return of nil."

Fine Gael's Michael Noonan noted that "the Minister will get nothing anyway so he can claim a victory now".

Earlier in the debate on the Bill, Mr Noonan said that the only people who might pay it were owners of holiday homes and country people who bought apartments in Dublin for their children to occupy while going to college. "The payment of this tax will be honoured more in the breach than the observance," he added. All this reads as though the Government may be having second thoughts about its ham-fisted effort to take the heat out of the market. Meanwhile, there are scant signs that housing in key urban areas is coming down in price or that new homes will be more readily available over the coming 12 months.

By the way, if you want to buy a holiday home, forget about Ireland and put your money into a place in the sun, not difficult now that every leading estate agent is flogging "Baconproof" holiday homes abroad.