Mr. Patrick Davitt:

On the timing issues and the types of properties on the market, Deputy Pringle is correct on the data room in which these documents are put up. Of course they have to be investigated. I encourage them to be investigated. We also have to remember that a solicitor drafts these documents and puts them into a data room. One would imagine that another solicitor who looks at them would find them equally as good as the person who put them up did. There may well be some disputes along the way with them, but that is the time - at the beginning - when they would be sorted out. Of course, somebody will have to be paid to do that but a buyer is spending €300,000, €400,000, €500,000, or maybe more, on a property, so why would they not spend a bit of money to investigate the title documents? At least they are there to be investigated. This is happening every day of the week. We have receivers putting property up for auction every day of the week and those documents are up online. Of course they are investigated by solicitors acting for the purchasers. Why would they not be?

I will make one further point about properties and doing a seller's pack when we do not know whether a sale will happen or not. This is exactly what we are trying to cut out. We are trying to cut that out because people are putting too many properties on the market to test the market. We are trying to cut those properties out. We are trying to make sure that if somebody goes to the expense of getting the proper documentation upfront and paying for it, they will only do so when they are serious. At the moment, an auctioneer would sell any property. Auctioneers have a reliance on properties they have on their books, some of which may not be saleable.

There might be a dispute here or there, or whatever the case may be. There will always be several properties on the books or in the office, maybe eight or ten, depending on the size of the agent involved. The same auctioneers would not have one, because every property that goes on the market is being sold, except for those that people do not want to buy. An important point to make is that people paying to get this information and then perhaps not selling their property is a one in a million thing. There are some, there is no doubt about it, but they are very few and this will cut out a few that should not be there anyway.