Michael Finneran (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the opportunity to contribute briefly to this important legislation. Anybody who has had dealings with property will be aware that the area of conveyancing and registering of property is a complex one which most people leave with their solicitor and do not get into the detail. We all know from acting as public representatives that our desks are full of requests to expedite dealings and registrations of properties. We attempt at all times to progress those requests in order that people will not be left on bridging finance and to establish title for them.

This Bill is a serious attempt to modernise and update the law on conveyancing, registration of land and property and the vast amounts of unregistered property. To date there has been no compulsion on anybody to register a property. This has caused difficulties. Can the Minister inform the House how many land holdings and properties are not registered? It has been indicated to me that there could be hundreds of thousands and perhaps up to half a million of such properties. As I am not sure if that figure is correct, perhaps the Minister would indicate the factual position.

We are prisoners of our past. We have heard at first hand from our grandparents of the great battles for the right to tenure and from our history books of Davitt and Parnell and great groups of people who fought for the right of people to own their own land. It is interesting that in eastern European countries people are now trying to re-establish the rights to lands taken from them in the 1920s up to the time of the Iron Curtain. If we were to go back far enough, we could discover people here who were disinherited and, in my case, driven west — to Hell or to Connacht. Are the people who acquired and took ownership of those lands the true owners? If we were to go back far enough, others could be established as the true owners.

While I am not sure if the legislation covers this matter, I know that much of the land was redistributed under the auspices of the Irish Land Commission. While it was distributed to individual farmers who have owned and farmed it legally since, many of them have never vested or registered it in their names. Thousands of portions of land allocated by the Irish Land Commission have still not been registered in the name of the recipient. In many cases it has been passed on to the next or subsequent generations. On a daily basis I come across such cases. If a member of the landowner's family wishes to build a house on a site on the land, it may be discovered that the land is not registered and consolidated into the family holding. It will then be necessary to search the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to try to resurrect documents from the Irish Land Commission dealings and refer it on to the Property Registration Authority in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. It is all part and parcel of a public representative's work in liaising between our constituents and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Property Registration Authority. Compulsory registration would eliminate such difficulties. I ask the Minister to confirm that we will have a system of compulsory registration.

The Property Registration Authority will decentralise to Roscommon town. Some 230 civil servants are to be relocated with an advance party of 60 already in place. It is expected that 90 will be in place by the end of January. A site was purchased for approximately €3.5 million. It is intended that a purpose-built 50,000 sq. ft. building will be constructed. I ask the Minister to indicate when construction will take place. Much of the registration work we are discussing will be done by the civil servants concerned.

I am not sure whether the legislation addresses the issue of absolute title. Some believe people from towns and cities and visitors to the country have a right to roam the agricultural land of Ireland. This has been a matter of major dispute with the representative groups of farmers, including the IFA, ICMSA and others, claiming this is not an entitlement without prior agreement, a position I absolutely support. Any right to roam must be established by a solid agreement that will protect the interests of the landlord against claim and damage. If his or her property is to be used for amenity purposes, he or she should receive compensation.

Recently we have had the phenomenon of management companies becoming involved in properties, particularly blocks of apartments in towns and cities. This has been a feature for many years in other countries, particularly the United States, where their operation seems to have been fine-tuned but it certainly has not been fine-tuned here. The tenants of many such properties have major issues regarding the responsibility of such companies. This area needs to be regularised and if legislation is needed, so be it, but I cannot find any mention of them in the Bill. Is there an intention to address this matter?

In recent weeks something we have taken as a given, the relationship and trust between a lending institution and a solicitor, has broken down. For many years undertakings given by a solicitor have been accepted wholeheartedly by lending institutions. We have all gone through that process when purchasing the family home or other properties but that trust has now broken down, which is sad. It may involve just a few individuals who are wrong. They have been mentioned in the press, but I will not name them here. Does the Minister have any proposals to restore the trust that has been broken? Can we get back to a situation where the financial institutions can depend on undertakings given or is legislation also needed in this area? It is sad that people who hold such a high position and work on our behalf in the courts and elsewhere would, through abuse, interfere with that trust. I fail to understand how they were offered overdraft facilities on clients' accounts but such things have been allowed to happen.

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