House prices in Ireland are rising faster than almost every other country in Europe, but experts are denying there is a property bubble.

Figures released by the European Union agency Eurostat show Irish house prices rose by 4.1% between June and September of last year.

Only Estonia, which is currently in the middle of an economic boom, had a higher increase.

The highest quarterly increases were seen in Estonia(+5.3%), Ireland (+4.1%) and the United Kingdom (+2.5%). While the largest falls were in Slovenia (-4.0%), Denmark (-3%) and Romania (-2.4%).

On average house prices in the Eurozone fell by 1.3%, and by 0.5% in the EU as a whole.

Ronan Lyons is an economist at Trinity College in Dublin. He says while demand is strong for housing, this is not a new property bubble.

This  Eurostat graph compares EU-wide prices with Eurozone prices

But when compared with the second quarter of last year, house prices - as measured by the House Price Index (HPI) - actually rose by 0.6% in the Eurozone and by 0.7% in the EU for the third quarter.

The highest annual increases in house prices in the third quarter of 2013 were recorded in Estonia (+11.1%), Luxembourg (+6.5%,- apartments only) and Latvia (+6.2%).

And the largest falls in property prices for Q3 of 2013 were in Croatia (-16.9), Cyprus (-8.0%) and Spain (-6.4%).