Mr. Zak Murtagh:

Yes, I do look at them. Deputy Ó Broin has made the point that statutory declarations are an important creature in what they are and seek to achieve in respect of veracity and law, and he made the comparison to an affidavit and outlined how important it is to follow the letter of the law on them. Our advisers see all kinds of problems relating to the witnessing of statutory declarations, which is a core area we see, and, to use layman's language, a sloppy adherence to statutory declaration rules. Some people do not understand their function in law as a witness, albeit a written one. We are just not seeing an adequate appreciation by landlords, whereby it is something of a box-ticking exercise. In my experience, we sometimes see certain problems with statutory declarations from absentee landlords. We see a raft of things going wrong with them, but the core point is their importance as a legal instrument is not fully appreciated.