Noonan ticks his boxes as Chopra stalks the streets

At 11.30am last Friday, Michael Noonan and Brendan Howlin were telling journalists how Ireland had passed the first quarterly EU/IMF examination with second-class honours.

They were very pleased. Noonan was probably thinking of getting an extra 10 per cent by answering a few questions in Irish.

Noonan seemed knowledgeable about everything - until he volunteered that he knew nothing at all about property prices, but he said he talked to people who did know about property prices. He did not say who these people were or how they knew about property prices.

Knowing about property prices seems a bit important nowadays, since the big hole in the banks that is going to do in this society for a few generations, has all to do with property prices.

''Growth is not a static thing," Noonan said at one point, and he seemed pleased with that observation also.

 The reason the jobs budget was no longer being called a jobs budget was because, Noonan said, the word budget connoted pain and suffering and we'd had enough of that, so they were calling it a jobs initiative, which would be announced in May.

But he then refused to answer questions about the scale of the state investment in the jobs initiative, because you can't be explicit about budgetary matters before the budgetary details were announced.

At one point he said: ''Nama has a business plan and that's an achievement," as though that was an achievement.

Then around the corner to the EU offices on Dawson Street to meet the examiners, Klaus Masuch of the ECB, István Székely of the EU Commission and Ajai Chopra of the IMF.

They confirmed their pleasure with what the new government was doing and especially the way it has ''taken full ownership of the goals and key elements of the EU-IMF supported programme''.

That is the programme Fine Gael and Labour said they would get changed, come hell or high water.

Well, maybe low water.

Remember ''Labour's way or Frankfurt's way''? I asked Masuch a simple question: why are we, the Irish people, being forced by the ECB to pay senior bondholders (of the banks) €35 billion that is not guaranteed by the state, given that there is no legal or moral obligation to do so, and there is no requirement in the EU-IMF agreement or in any other agreement that requires us to do so?

Masuch disputed the €35 billion figure and then spoke at some length - I thought tangentially to the question. I asked again, and this time he said the ECB, on behalf of people all over Europe, was lending the Irish banks €120 billion at 1 per cent interest rate and Ireland had to play its part in all of this.

Masuch, Székely and Chopra referred a few times to the sectors of the Irish economy sheltered from competition, and they singled out the legal professions and pharmacies.

I had been down in the Four Courts earlier in the morning for a legal case and noted how many barristers still wore horse hair on their heads.

Well, it seems there will be not just hair, but skin and hair, flying down there in the not-too-distant future.

Then off to the event of the day at the Shelbourne Hotel, a landmark of our times.

Three heroes - Bernard McNamara, David Courtney and Jerry O'Reilly - bought this hotel for €140 million in 2004, refurbished it at a cost of €125 million (some of the refurbishment is magnificent, a lot of it awful), and the place is now worth around €92 million and is owned by Nama.

But the Shelbourne was the place to be last Friday, for an auction of 84 Irish property lots being sold by an English auctioneer, Allsop.

When I got there at around 2.30pm, there were about 500 people present. The lots were being sold at a rate of knots.

Pokey apartments in Galway, for instance, a sort of cupboard where you might expect to find Bertie Ahern drinking tea, went for €120,000.

The master of ceremonies was an English chap, which seemed entirely appropriate. The bids were flying, thousands upon thousands, and not a bother - €14.4 million in all bought in a few hours.

Who knows where the money came from - or from whom - but it wasn't Germans who were doing the buying, but rather fellas with Mullingar accents.

There was a live link from the Shelbourne to Doheny and Nesbitt's, a few hundred yards down the road. On my way there just before 3pm, who should I see on the street walking against me but Ireland's best friend for ever, Ajai Chopra.

I was going to invite him for a pint in Doheny & Nesbitt to see the video link and the real Ireland, but he seemed distracted and slightly furtive, so I left him alone.