Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

If we have waited since 1707, we can wait another few years.

Great urgency is required, however, on a different issue, which is not addressed in the Bill but which people cannot afford to wait so long to be addressed. It concerns the plight of the many clients of property management companies. I saw recently that an estimated 500,000 people are in such circumstances so this is a major issue in property law. The Minister lectures us about the distinction between property management agents and property management companies, which is all very well, but, given the daily experience of so many heavily indebted young people — most are young — who are struggling to make ends meet, the Minister's distinction is somewhat arcane. As far as such people are concerned the property management company is frequently the plaything of the developer.

The employment of a property management agent is part of the confusion and obfuscation because the developer can manipulate the property management company. He can, for example, retain a couple of units in his ownership, by which he can frustrate the application of the normal company law provisions. He can use the property management agent to distract unsuspecting clients, who never intended to wake up wedded to a property management company and did not understand that was what they had signed up for. The local authority escapes responsibility for the taking in charge of such developments and is happy to look the other way. It is the best thing that ever happened to local authorities, given the backlog they already have in respect of the taking in charge of more conventional estates in urban and suburban areas. They are delighted at the new strategem by which so many units can grow up overnight, for which they do not have to take responsibility.

Property management agents can obfuscate and delay in delivering the services it has contracted for. Many people who live in multi-unit developments would not be concerned about the detail of company law if the services for which they paid were delivered. Very often, in my experience, those services are not delivered and, when fees are arbitrarily increased, customers have no resort to the local authority and the management company, if it can keep track of the matter, which it usually cannot, will refer them to the management agent. The agent then claims he is helpless as he only has so much money in the kitty and is doing his best. In most cases, the agents have no experience of being a company, running it according to company law and requiring the services for which they have contracted be delivered. It is a mess.

It is very well for the Minister to say he looks forward to the final report of the Law Reform Commission. He said: "It will provide a foundation for which we can develop the necessary amendments to the legislation that regulate these corporate entities." That is a marvellous sentence. The Minister is well capable of such a sentence but I do not know if he came up with it himself because it needs to be worked on and there is a lot involved in it. If the 500,000 occupants of the developments to which I referred have to wait for the entire process to come to completion, this will be a project for the Minister's successor and that will not be greeted warmly outside this House. Thousands of people need redress now.

If the Law Reform Commission did such an excellent job as we have credited it with doing, in not only publishing the consultation paper but in producing the text of a draft Bill, surely the Minister can approach the commission to ask its members to undertake a similar task in respect of this more modern problem, and to resource it accordingly. The Minister is now saying that the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, the Companies Registration Office, the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement, the National Consumer Agency and the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform are involved. Anyone with any experience of Government knows that the drafting process in such circumstances is a never-ending project and its effect is to put it on the long finger. Who will take the lead? Will it be the Companies Registration Office or the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment?

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