Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I hope the Minister of State will depart a little from his script in his response to my second question, though I appreciate that he must give us the official position. There are two elements to my next query. First, he knows we use the report mechanism because we cannot table amendments because they would place a charge on the State. I hope he understands this aspect. What I am really asking, because the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, made it clear earlier that the Government is not going to insert provision for this register into this legislation, is whether the Government thinks that such a register would be a good thing. I think it is eminently sensible and would be a very valuable tool. Notwithstanding that the Minister of State is not minded to support its inclusion here, is its introduction something the Government would actively consider? I am asking this because all the other things mentioned by him which are all valid, do not do what such a register would do, which would be to give us real-time information on land transactions. This would be valuable because it would provide the State, as it becomes more involved in active land management, which is something we all want to see more of, with information regarding where the pressure points are, where speculative investment is being made and where we would like to see active land management interventions, either by the Land Development Agency or other bodies.

The fact that we do not have this information, even if we do have a land register, means we do not have a real-time land transactions register and that we are operating blind. I fully understand the position the Minister of State has outlined regarding the amendments, but I ask him to tell us if there is a discussion ongoing in the Department about this kind of initiative, if it is something the Department could consider and if the Department could discuss it with the Department of Justice, so long as the PSRA remains within the ambit of that Department? Without this, all the other things the Minister of State spoke about will not be as impactful as they would otherwise be if we had this kind of real-time information.