Holy moly, are property developers back in fashion?

It was interesting this week to witness the glitz and glamour surrounding the eighth birthday party for Seán Mulryan's Whitewater shopping centre in Newbridge, Co Kildare.

A year ago, most developers were kryptonite to the Irish business fraternity. Nobody wanted to be seen near them, not in public anyway.

They were considered akin to the embarrassing uncle who got drunk at the last family wedding and ruined it for everybody else by throwing up on the dance floor, before getting turfed out and leaving the rest of us to clean up their mess.

In recent months, some of them have started to put their heads above the publicity parapet again. It must be this mini-boom in Irish property prices that has them all excited.

Mulryan was never bust like some of the others and has a good working relationship with Nama. He was still “a developer”, though, as per the lexicon of the great national debate that has ensued ever since the economy went bang.

At Whitewater’s birthday celebration this week – who even knew that shopping centres needed birthday celebrations? – Mulryan was snapped alongside various well-known faces, who were also happily snapped alongside him.

There he is above pictured with jockey Ruby Walsh, fresh from his fall at the Triumph Hurdle in Cheltenham.

The sight of a property developer waving shopping bags at people – even a solvent one like Mulryan – is likely to be enough to put some folk off their breakfast negative-equity flakes.

Any minute now, Seán Dunne is probably going to walk back into town and start bragging again about his “balls of steel”.

God help us.