The Government is also due to announce its capital spending plans this week – for business readers the interest will be in the detail, especially in relation to any pre-tender but near-term schemes.

In economic terms, the housing crisis is one of the State’s biggest challenges. House price data and Central Bank credit data may well show the property market cooled further over the summer, despite a rising population and a lack of new houses.

The Central Bank’s mortgage rules may well be partly to blame for that slow down. However, the medium-to-long term prospects for the euro, which looks set to remain weak as long as the ECB keeps pumping out QE, has implications for the returns calculations of investors from outside the euro area.

As well as that, the fall-out from Volkswagen’s emissions scandal will rumble on.

Astonishingly, the cost of the crisis for the car maker could well turn out to have graver consequences for Europe’s economic power-house than the half-decade long Greek debt fiasco.

Tomorrow, the European Commission will launch its Action Plan for a Capital Markets Union.

Meanwhile, the results front in both the UK and Ireland is relatively quiet this week. Building group Abbey holds its annual general meeting on Friday, however.

Tomorrow also marks the end of the third quarter, which for US companies, by and large, is expected to have been a tough one.

Forecasts for third-quarter S&P 500 earnings now suggest an almost four percent decline.