All eyes will be on Elm Park this weekend to see if buyers jump at the chance to buy cut-price apartments in the scheme that developer Bernard McNamara once tried to protect from speculative investors.

Back in 2006 at the height of the property boom, McNamara went on the Pat Kenny show to explain why he was planning to claw back any profit made by punters who intended to flip on the units they had reserved at Elm Park, then two years away from completion.

But it is a different game today, and far from selling them on at a profit, it is now a matter of purely shifting them at a reduced price. McNamara's initiative and similar moves by Ray Grehan on several of his sites will be watched by every developer out there with blocks to sell.

If the plan works watch out for similar moves by others in the coming weeks to get the banks off their backs. In the meantime a very concerned Government will be announcing its own rescue scheme soon and will be anxious to avoid the damp squib offered by Darling in the UK. A little tinkering with stamp duty won't work because of the depth of the problem. Something imaginative will be required to reopen the building sites. Bring back Charlie McCreevy.