And then, without warning, a little light shone on our American friends across the Atlantic and what did it show? A new word for us all to learn to our cost - subprime. And a new world where bricks and mortar were worth not as much as we had led ourselves to believe.

If you own your own home, what do you think it's worth currently? And what do you think it will be worth in 10 years time? Double? Perhaps, even treble its value now? Or maybe a little less? For instance, how about 50% less!

Yes, I said, 50, five-zero, per cent less. But be comforted. As yet, such a forecast of home-owning doom and gloom seems confined to that other part of this island where the Celtic Tiger has now curled up in a corner and is not wagging its green, white and gold tail with the same confidence as before.

When I came across the prophesy of Morgan Kelly, I thought 'he is the scariest man on the island of Ireland.'

Indeed, so scary that if you read what he has to say about house prices, you are unlikely to have a sound night's sleep. So this column today comes with a health warning. If you don't want to know the score, as he puts it, turn away now.

Still with me, brave souls? Well, I came across Morgan Kelly's writing in the Irish Times last autumn. He was asked by the paper to answer the question 'Will Ireland have a property crash?' And he responded with a very disturbing and emphatic: "Yes."

He wrote that house prices in 10 years' time, and in real terms, (that is allowing for annual inflation) could be half of what they are now. Although his comments did not relate to Northern Ireland, I remember thinking we were unlikely to escape unscathed and maybe we should all look at the supposed value of our homes from a more realistic perspective.

Do I hear you ask 'who is Morgan Kelly and what are his bona-fides?' He is no less than Professor of Economics at University College, Dublin, and one would assume, should know what he's talking about.

Just as I had half-forgotten his first shocking forecast in 2007, he has popped up again in 2008 in the Irish Times with yet another article.

His message this time? "Sorry, it's worse than I thought. My forecast has turned out to be wildly optimistic."

He had assumed that Irish house prices would suffer a gentle annual decline over the next decade, of say 5% per annum, taking them to 50pc of current values by the year 2017. Instead, in 2007 alone, the drop had been 10% to 15%.

The professor now says that the state of the market is far worse than he anticipated and "is giving signs of reaching a critical point". This could result in "a general panic and prices collapse" .

He paints a picture of major property developers in the Republic, heavily in debt to Irish banks, unable to off-load the 50,000 houses and apartments, they have planned for this year.

What's more, he argues, the developers have yet to move many of the 70,000 homes they built last year. Therefore, they cannot repay the interest they owe on billions of euros in bank borrowings.

Most worrying, he says Ireland is different from other countries such as Spain where the property market has hit a crisis. The problem down south is compounded by thousands of unsold new homes coinciding with a slump in the prices of second-hand homes.

He even compares the Republic to Finland which suffered a major economic crisis in 1991 and suggests the same could befall the south.

" It is appearing increasingly unlikely that builders will be able to move their inventory at any price, that can remotely cover their borrowings, making a wave of bankruptcies inevitable.

"It is not hard to imagine a scenario where tens of thousands of new units built by bankrupt developers are sold for a fraction of their construction cost or simply boarded up, leaving most existing apartments and commuter-belt houses effectively valueless.

"With rising unemployment, falling tax revenues, and sharp falls in stock prices, it is becoming evident that the problems of the Irish economy run a great deal deeper than a few overpriced houses."

Of course, there is another school of thought. 'Don't worry - this is not the apocalypse,' wrote Dublin commentator and former editor, Damien Kiberd, recently in the Sunday Times. He argued that the housing market was correcting itself. The banks had instructed developers to cut back on new homes and apartments to avoid flooding the market.

The Irish employment market was expanding by 5% a year. Private business alone in the Republic was employing more than one million workers, the equivalent of the entire workforce in 1987. Young exiles returning and migrant workers flocking from the continent would still require somewhere to live.

However, one way or another, it still looks a deeply worrying picture for Dublin. If Professor Murphy's Armageddon scenario did unfold, it would also have serious repercussions for Northern Ireland as well. The two economies are now so inter-dependent that one cannot escape the other's failings.

Whatever happens down south, the next few months look to be anxious and critical times as we all find out around the world if a recession is biting or not. What's a recession?

It's two successive quarters in a year when the economy is in decline. US President Harry Truman had his own famous definition: "It's a recession when your neighbour loses his job: it's a depression when you lose yours." Things are not quite that bad - yet. Recession? Depression? Or simply a short-term blip for the once-booming Celtic Tiger? Who knows but one would presume the Professor of Economics at Dublin University should.

While other commentators do not share his doom-laden views, he paints a dismal scenario.

Who is right? One set of people, I suspect, have a very good idea because they hold the purse-strings of all of us and have financed property developers in the south to the tune of an incredible €100bn euros. Somewhere deep in the vaults of the big Irish banks, the truth will out. Sooner rather than later?

In the meantime, estate agents of the world unite. And let none of the rest of us get carried away with the value of our bricks and mortar.

Want a sleepless night?

Just keep repeating the name of Ireland's scariest man ¿ Morgan Kelly ¿ Morgan Kelly ... Morgan Kelly.