The days of Dublin's Grafton Street being among the world's most expensive shopping spots are finally over.

Lisney Commercial, which together with international property consultants Cushman & Wakefield, produces an annual table of the most expensive shopping streets in the world, has conceded that Ireland's finest thoroughfare is about to slide off the scale.

It will be a humbling drop for a street once credited with having the fifth most expensive rental costs on the planet, right up there with New York, Paris and Milan and, significantly, ahead of London and Tokyo.

But now, with the recession and the introduction of new rental legislation from the end of February, which will put an end to upward-only rent reviews, the cobbled pedestrian avenue may turn more high street than high end.

By last September, Grafton Street had already slipped from fifth to eighth place in the chart, primarily due to falling rental values, which had dropped by 23% over the previous year to €4,356 per square metre.

That compared with €13,027 for Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, which retained its position as the most expensive.

"Grafton Street slipped down the list and we will see it slip further unquestionably. The days of those headlines [of it being amongst the most expensive in the world] are gone – they are history," said Lisney director Hugh Markey.

"Grafton Street is going through a very difficult period at the moment. The downturn and the [low] numbers of tourists have had their impact."

Dublin's fall from grace on the global list has been a marked one. For its November 2008 compilation, Cushman & Wakefield noted that the Irish capital "has been the best performer in the top 10 with the city's Grafton Street rising two places in the ranking to enter the world's top five most expensive streets for the first time".