Politicians of every hue are feeling real heat . . .especially from middle-class homeowners . . . over this incredibly lucrative tax.

But the latest exchequer returns reveal the reality of even hinting at changing the tax regime in the all-important property market.

Loose talk about stamp duty has cost millions in tax returns. The income from stamp duty is, for the first time in many years, down on Department of Finance forecasts by 81m and, judging by the grinding halt the property market has come to, a further fallback is highly likely.

Nobody is saying that the property market and construction sector are in danger of collapse, but even minor wobbles make a lot of people very nervous because of the greatly unbalanced role this sector plays in the overall health of the economy. Not just that, all homeowners have a huge amount of their personal wealth tied up in property thanks to the fact that prices have risen tenfold in the past 15 years.

Minor gains in stamp duty may seem like very small beer indeed if the price of property starts to fall.

The politicians have only themselves to blame for this decline in income and if they are not very careful, their attempts to buy votes could end up costing them very dearly if the middle classes they are trying to appease end up losing out in property values.

Playing the stamp-duty card has turned out not to be the sort of killer trump Enda Kenny and Michael McDowell believed it could be. If anything, it is proving to be a dangerous game of bluff.

The property market may be all about bricks and mortar but, perversely, its foundations are actually laid on that most ephemeral base of all, confidence. And at the moment, the more the politicians seem to promise, the less optimistic we all feel.