INTERNATIONAL fundraiser Kingsley Aikens has built up quite a reputation as one of the best after dinner speakers on the Dublin circuit. Last week he again came up trumps as guest speaker at the final dinner of the Society of Chartered Surveyors in Dublin’s Burlington Hotel.
The former Leinster rugby footballer who recently stepped down as head of the Ireland Funds provided a highly entertaining mix of jokes, anecdotes and encouragement for a property and construction industry devestated by the recession and the banking crisis.
“We are not in a recession but rather a pre-boom period,” he told a packed house of over 800 diners. SCS President Peter Stapleton warned that if the present economomic and political instability continued after the general election it would scare off overseas property investors.
He said there was “emerging interest” by American investors in Irish assets following the dramatic fall in values over the past three years.
With the Society of Chartered Surveyors and the Irish Auctioneers & Valuers Institute due to merge in the coming weeks, the dinner attracted a larger than usual number of estate agencies.
However, unlike previous years, most chairs were filled by staff members rather than guests.
The largest representation was from chartered surveyors firm Bruce Shaw, which has relocated many of its executives to overseas markets where development activity is continuing.
