DOES THE Irish Property Facility Management Association know something about the commercial and residential property markets that the rest of us are missing? The organisation’s national conference at Croke Park today has set itself the task of examining asset management “in the context of the health and growth of the Irish economy”. How’s that for optimism?

True, the IPFMA concedes that we are experiencing challenging times that require a totally new approach from property, asset and facility managers. But concentrating on the “health and growth” of the Irish economy seems a bit far-fetched at a time when thousands of apartment owners are heavily in debt after failing to pay service charges for the past few years. Many management companies have taken the legal route, but even when they get court decrees against the defaulters they still cannot collect the fees because the funds are simply not available.

And things are not much better in many provincial shopping centres. Not only have the owners lost tenants on a vast scale, but it seems that relatively few traders are paying service charges even after getting rental discounts of 25 per cent or more. A number of these centres are in Nama, but the State agency seems reluctant to put them on the market as they are unprofitable and probably unsaleable.

The keynote speaker at Croke Park will be Danny McCoy, director general of Ibec. Others taking to the stage will be Frank Conlon, manager of the IDA’s property division, and Don Nugent, manager of Dundrum Town Centre.