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

I do not underestimate the scale of the work. To be clear, in the first instance, what the amendments are asking, and what I am asking the Minister of State to informally raise within the Department, is a review of the digitisation process. In the village in which I live, Clondalkin, there are large parts of the area where there are no title deeds at all and, for example, nobody owns the entire main street, most of the pathways and so on. We have dealt with a number of anomalies where title deeds did not exist or were disputed. In fact, when I went to my director of services for planning and development some years ago and asked them to do a review, they said it would take so much time and effort that they did not have the resources. I am not asking for a review of all title deeds and the historic development of those because that would be too onerous. However, a tight review of the digitisation process to examine even a small number of pilot areas or a small number of case studies to identify the extent to which that digitisation process was successful or not could be a helpful tool.

While I accept the argument around operational independence, I still think, because it is a State agency and under the remit of the Department, that some consideration of the proposal in front of the Minister of State would be merited. Again, as I said, it could be done as a pilot project involving a couple of counties or towns to review the effect of digitisation and how it worked out. I will not press the matter. I just wanted to raise it so the Minister of State could forward it internally in the Department.