One More Thing: Conferences, conferences everywhere

It’s raining corporate shindigs at the moment. You can’t walk 20 yards across town without bumping into some business head in a tuxedo.

Last night, it was the annual Dublin Chamber dinner, addressed by Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Liam Kavanagh, managing director of The Irish Times and president of the chamber, and the wonderfully-named Dan Doctoroff, chief executive of Bloomberg.

Kenny was fairly busy on the conferences front this week, as he also addressed the IMI National Management Conference on Wednesday.

He still hasn’t fixed his watch, though.

Do you remember a few weeks back Kenny left everyone kicking their heels waiting on his arrival at a Google launch? He did it again at IMI. Joe Schmidt, the Ireland rugby boss, was due on stage at 2.30pm, following the Taoiseach. Kenny was late again, however, and it was closer to 3.30pm before Schmidt started. He was due to speak for an hour, but could only manage 15 minutes before he had to leave.

He got a cheer, however, when he told the room that he had accidentally clocked Kenny in the gob with a rugby ball at the photoshoot.

Separately, I hear the Construction Industry Federation are spitting the proverbial teeth after asking Dermot O'Leary, chief economist at Goodbody, to speak at their property conference two weeks back.

O’Leary declined on the basis that he would be “out of the country”. Lo and behold, he popped up in Ballsbridge at the same time as the CIF conference to speak at the launch of Goodie’s own construction and property report.

Looks like he’ll need to build some bridges with the property guys.