PROPERTY is all about good timing. Unfortunately this week's announcement that a new degree course in real estate is to be launched at Athlone Institute of Technology is at least a year too late.

With many estate agents around the country reviewing their staff requirements - in other words laying staff off - enrolment might initially be slow for the course which has been developed jointly by the Athlone college and the Institute of Professional Auctioneers & Valuers.

The full-time three-year course promises students a Bachelor of Business in Real Estate degree - the first ever in the country. Students will get a thorough grounding in surveying, measuring, valuing and marketing property.

They will also concentrate on the ground rules, as well as legislation that is coming down the tracks. Hopefully, the market will have bounced back well before the first graduates are released into the real world.

Meanwhile the IPAV is limbering up for its annual conference which kicks off tomorrow in the well padded surroundings of the Druids Glen Hotel and Country Club in Co Wicklow.

This year's guest speaker is Charlie McCreevy who, in the old days, could be relied to liven things up.

However, he's less interesting since he began to rely on a script writer back in Brussels with no feel for the things that really matter to auctioneers at the moment.

Still, the IPAV has its own firebrand chief executive Fintan McNamara who is well capable of causing a stir. Remember his suggestion that auctioneers fees needed to be bumped up to compensate for the slowdown in prices. No sooner had he made the announcement when one of the top auctioneering firms had to take out ads to reassure that fees would not be going up.

Over at the Irish Auctioneers & Valuers Institute, a total calm has descended, despite the turmoil in the market and the bad press that the industry has been getting. Members have not been slow to criticise Merrion Square for its head-in-the-sand approach to the over-the-top programme on RTÉ1 about the crisis in the property industry. No comment was forthcoming from the institute and members felt let down that there was no one to defend them.

Meanwhile, objections to the programme by individual firms may well lead to a steward's enquiry at RTÉ over its shock tactics and bias.

It ain't over yet.