Dr. Gabriel Brennan:

I will clarify that. It is perhaps linked to the earlier point in regard to legislative change to the Electronic Commerce Act. The wording of section 10 of that Act is a little odd in that it appears to allow electronic contracts but not electronic deeds. For the PRA to implement e-registration, a statutory instrument to remove that would be required. That is the only immediate legislative change we have identified. Obviously, this process requires electronic signatures. A number of other jurisdictions have introduced an advanced electronic signature provision under which a solicitor receives authority from the client to engage on his or her behalf with the hub or electronic environment. We initially proposed to go that route on the basis that it was the route chosen by other jurisdictions. However, when we consulted solicitors on the matter, they were concerned about the potential risk implications of that and felt we should look to a process whereby clients would have their own electronic signature but would still have to go the solicitors office to apply that signature. We are now looking at the provision of a one-time only electronic signature which would cease following a particular transaction. Because people often only purchase a property once in their lifetime, an advanced electronic signature is only required once. This perhaps fits into the broader e-Government agenda. There may be need for engagement between the State agencies and Government on how we could implement this so that it would fit into other proposals, for example, e-litigation, e-Courts Service and so on. There is a broader agenda that needs to be looked at. As I said earlier, we have identified a need for only one statutory instrument at this point.