During the initial phase, the land is owned by the developer. At some point, it is vested/transferred to the management company. Under the new legislation, all substantially completed apartment blocks must be vested to the management company by 1st September 2011 and all new blocks must be vested before the first apartment is sold.
Normally the rent is £1/€1 per apartment and I've never heard of the developer taking it (but could obviously be wrong). It's such a small amount of money that I can't imagine that they'd care.