NIALL QUINN was the star turn at this year’s Irish Auctioneers and Valuers’ (IAVI) day out, giving more than his money’s worth with an entertaining hour-long talk about his life and footballing times. (His fee was reportedly €10,000).
Blame is part of the game, he said, in countries as in football, but when the inquiries and the moaning stop, we all have to get on with business. At this point professional freestyle football entertainer Mark Tierney – a lad who turned failure into success after not making the grade in English football – gave a lively performance to illustrate Quinn’s point.
Earlier, the 400 or so estate agents who gathered in Dublin’s Burlington Hotel heard sobering talks by cut-meister Colm McCarthy, Government economic adviser Dr Alan Ahearne (the man who predicted the property crash back in 2007) and former Savills chairman Aidan O’Hogan.
Agents were surprisingly upbeat, even after they’d listened to what McCarthy and Ahearne had to say about Nama and to O’Hogan on the state of different market sectors. The day kicked off with a talk on the Property Services Regulatory Authority (PRSA) and later IAVI president Aine Myler wondered how the Government could justify its continued lack of regulation: legislation giving the PRSA teeth still hasn’t been passed.
She also repeated what she’d said recently, that it’s time to change data protection law so that a national property price register can be established. Agents who missed the day can watch it all when the video is put up on the IAVI website next week – as well as on YouTube. Thanks to young IAVI communications officer Conor O’Donovan, you can now keep up with agents on Facebook and Twitter.
