Mr. Frank Treacy:

As interim chief executive of the Property Registration Authority, PRA, I am pleased to be given the opportunity to discuss the e-conveyancing agenda and the steps we have taken to further it. The PRA's primary statutory function is to manage and control the Registry of Deeds and the Land Registry. It is also a function of the authority to complete the Irish land register, which will lead to a single system of title registration supportive of Government policies on e-registration, e-conveyancing and the emerging Irish spatial data infrastructure.

The key contribution of the PRA to the economy is the provision of a register of title to land which guarantees security for those dealing with property. By international comparison, Ireland has a very extensive and well developed system of land registration with approximately 94% of the total land mass of the State and approximately 90% of the legal titles in Ireland now registered in the Land Registry. In the case of the residue of unregistered land, that is, land that is not registered in the Land Registry, title must be proved for every transaction. This can be a complicated and expensive process. The PRA has an active programme to close this gap and add to the approximately 2 million individual legal titles already registered and complete the land register.

From the delivery of the Law Reform Commission report on e-conveyancing in 2006, the PRA was conscious of the key role it would have to play and it set about developing the electronic services that would have to be provided to interact with and support the wider e-conveyancing process. To this end, the PRA has always adopted an open and collaborative approach in its development of the services. The terms e-conveyancing and e-registration are often confused and used interchangeably. While electronic registration or e-registration is a key element of the e-conveyancing system, it only concerns the registration process, including online access to the digital register and map. Electronic conveyancing envisages paperless transactions through most or all stages of the conveyancing process, from pre-sale to post-completion, including contracts, planning, property surveys and the dispersal of funds among all involved parties. The PRA has designed the e-registration process with a view to ensuring interoperability with the e-conveyancing process.

The PRA has also offered online access to the Land Registry since 1999 and it has successfully implemented a number of major technology projects. E-discharges was the first e-registration service offered by the PRA. The existing process was redesigned to allow lenders to apply securely for the cancellation of a charge or mortgage on an electronic basis without the need to lodge any paper documents. This is done almost instantaneously. All development was undertaken in-house by PRA staff and the system was launched in 2009. All of the major lenders and a number of local authorities use the system to cancel their housing loans and almost 60% of all discharges are now processed through the e-discharges system. E-charging orders were developed as a collaborative process between the PRA, the Department of Health and the HSE to facilitate the legislation which underpins the nursing home support scheme, which is known as the fair deal scheme, to provide for the lodgement of electronic charging orders by the HSE. The development of the system was undertaken in-house and built on the existing e-discharges platform.

The success of e-discharges and e-charging orders has given the PRA the momentum to proceed to develop further e-registration services. In keeping with the collaborative approach adopted throughout this project, which includes all stakeholders having representation on the project board, the PRA undertook a substantial exercise in stakeholder engagement. Phase 2 of e-registration began with a number of workshops with members of the legal profession and the lending community. The scope of the project was agreed by all parties through their representation on the project board and was confined to the elements pertaining to registration. It did not include elements of conveyancing outside of the registration process. The system, which was launched late in 2013, allows users to draft and circulate deeds of transfer of registered property in a secure electronic environment. The drafting process allows for interaction with the land register, including the digital map, and the system ensures that the correct form of transfer is produced, thereby reducing opportunities for error. Other features include the facility to pay fees by variable direct debit and to correspond electronically with the PRA. The facility to draft deeds of charge will be available shortly and a facility to electronically apply to protect priority - e-priority - entry on the register will follow. A working group comprising equal representation from the PRA, the Law Society and the Irish Banking Federation is currently being formed to design the process for these new services. Also, for the first time, the PRA has made available the schemas which will allow designers of practice manager systems to develop their systems to interface with those of the PRA. In tandem with this, the PRA has engaged actively with other public sector bodies which hold relevant information, including the Revenue Commissioners, the Courts Service and the Companies Registration Office, to identify methods of improving interaction between these bodies.

In the recently published Construction 2020 policy paper for the construction sector, the Government highlighted the critical role of e-conveyancing in providing a modern, efficient, cost-effective and secure system to support transactions in the property market. The PRA is fully supportive of the further development of e-conveyancing while also acknowledging the difficult challenges that delivering end-to-end conveyancing presents. In support of Government policy and as the statutory body with responsibility for property registration, the PRA will actively contribute to the review and will continue, in consultation with other stakeholders, to facilitate e-conveyancing through the ongoing development and further roll-out of e-registration services.