Overnight weakness on Wall Street took its toll on the Dublin market yesterday with the ISEQ falling back by 3.2 per cent.

The failure of Wall Street to give a positive lead prompted a huge bout of profit taking and most of the market's leading stocks took a pasting.

Dealers said this happened despite low volumes of trade and a partial recovery when Wall Street opened in the afternoon.

One dealer said Dublin simply followed the international markets, many of which experienced sharper falls. Those who perceived the markets as overvalued after the recent recovery may have been proven right, said one dealer.

By 3 p.m. the ISEQ was down 149.88 points, just over 3 per cent. "The market has been vulnerable to a surge of profit taking for some time, but it may be happening now after a delay of several weeks," said a dealer.

As is normal, the most liquid stocks, like the large financials, slid back the most dramatically with AIB dropping 50p to close at £10. The slippage for Bank of Ireland was even more acute, it fell 90p to £13.10 in large volumes of trade.

CRH was another victim, falling from £10.35 to £10.05, as investors sought to lock in their profits. Smurfit was one of the few stocks to remain stable, only shedding 1p to finish at 133p.

Stocks with a presence in New York were not let off the hook. Elan, which announced plans to raise up to $1.425 billion (£976 million) through the issue of zero-coupon notes in a private placing, was knocked back from £48.06 to £46.25. Taking a lead from Wall Street Iona Technology plummeted from £19 to £17.75. Elsewhere the other big losers were First Active, down 25p to 308p, Independent Newspapers, down 18p to 227p, Irish Life, down 35p to 555p, Irish Permanent, down 25p at 900p.