Knight Frank's third quarter report on global property prices has found that Ireland has the world's fastest growing property market after prices increased by 15 percent in the year to mid-September. That means that prices are growing at three times the speed of the most optimistic forecasts for the rest of the economy.

Ireland was ranked just ahead of Turkey, its property market growing by 14 percent. The UAE, the UK and Estonia make up the rest of the top five.

Ireland sat at the bottom of the index for most of the period between 2009 and 2012, and this report points out that prices are still 39 percent below pre-crash levels.

It is worth bearing in mind that while this figure is for the whole of Ireland, the highest increases have been in Dublin. The Central Statistics Office has already reported that house prices in Dublin rose by 22 percent in the year to May. Figures released by Daft.ie suggest that that trend has continued; by October it reported that average prices in Dublin were up by 25 percent compared to the same period last year.

Elsewhere

The Knight Frank Global House Price Index also finds that residential prices fell by 5.2 percent in the UAE city of Dubai - its first quarterly property price decline in the last four years.

The global increases in property prices remain low, due to the uncertain economic outlook in Europe and slower than expected growth in the US property market.

The slow down in the Chinese economy is also reflected in the index - 58 of the 70 cities for which records are available showed price declines.

Italy, Greece, Slovenia and Cyprus sit at the bottom of the index which polls 54 countries.