A MINIMUM of snagging by developers means that service charges are being used by apartment owners to make good their estates. That was one of the stark findings heard by delegates at last weekend’s IPFMA Conference, which was chaired by Siobhan O’Dwyer of O’Dwyer Property Management (pictured). The industry gathering of the Irish Property Facility Management Association also heard reports that there were serious flaws in the manner in which fire safety systems are being completed and certified or, in many cases, not completed or certified.

Equally worrying for apartment owners, legal experts identified a complete lack of assurances and entitlement for legal remedy or recourse by the purchaser against the developer in the event that defects occur.

The conference followed on from a recent IPFMA submission to government, which called for significant amendments to the draft Multi-Unit Developments (MUD) Bill 2009, prior to its enactment into legislation.

The IPFMA welcomes the advent of the new Bill but believes that its legislative proposals are not sufficiently all encompassing and do not go far enough to protect owners of future multi-unit developments by providing an effective and workable legal framework. As the organisation is made up of professionals working on the ground, including property managers, surveyors and engineers, who spend their working days dealing with problems in new apartment blocks, their opinions are certainly worth listening to.