Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will take this opportunity to bring to the Minister's attention a matter I regard as serious and which has been ongoing for a number of years. It is an issue that arose following the digitisation of land boundaries in Ireland by the PRA, formerly known as the Land Registry. It moved to the digitisation of land maps during my first term as a Deputy. Issues with one landowner were brought to my attention in 2015. There were clear anomalies between the Ordnance Survey maps that person had and the folio they owned, on the one hand, and the digitised map, on the other. Unfortunately, in that case, because the adjoining landowner did not agree that those anomalies had taken place, it ended up in court and cost that person €80,000. That is a devastating amount. Since that person's traumatic experience, for which the PRA refused to accept any responsibility, I have come across numerous other cases in County Donegal where it is clear that the digitisation of the maps has adjusted boundaries.

As the Minister will be aware, land disputes in Ireland can be very serious. In many instances, I am advised that, thankfully, neighbours have resolved the disputes themselves and agreed that the boundaries are not right. They have gone to the Land Registry and, apparently in some instance, resolved those anomalies because there was agreement. However, where the adjoining landowners are not in agreement, it can end in serious and costly disputes. In those instances, I am not aware of any occasion where the Land Registry has accepted its digital maps contained an error.

There was a report in 2014, known as the Prendergast report, entitled, Towards the Registration of Defined Property Boundaries in Ireland. Involved in that report and supporting it were the Law Society, the Bar Council, Engineers Ireland, the Irish Planning Institute and other institutions that work with surveyors, architects and so on. It was a report of the inter-professional task force on property boundaries. It identified these issues as far back as 2014 but the PRA has never accepted any mistakes or errors have been made. That means people end up in protracted legal disputes.

Six incidents have crossed my desk where I have no doubt there was an error. In the number of instances where I have engaged with the PRA, it has not accepted any errors whatsoever. It has refused to accept them. I understand parliamentary questions were tabled to Ministers, which will be on the record of the Oireachtas. Those Ministers talked about advice, exposure to legal costs and not wanting to get involved. That is totally and utterly wrong.

I thought this was just a Donegal issue but I have received correspondence in the past week from a family in County Galway who have also gone through this experience. I have spoken to that family and they told me they are aware of families in counties Clare and Wicklow who have experienced similar trauma. That is what it is. In some cases, lines are going down the middle of a field. Obviously, that is an error. Those lines should obviously be drawn along a bank or a ditch. In some cases, there are lines going through very old houses. Clearly a mistake has been made.

I will correspond with the Minister on this matter but I want to put on the record my belief that the digitisation process in the PRA has led to serious errors that have pushed people into protracted disputes with their neighbours and in some cases, I am sorry to report, with their families. Nobody is putting their hand up and saying mistakes were made when a blind man could see mistakes were made. I will correspond with the Minister and will bring to her attention the 2014 report I mentioned and its findings. This is an ongoing issue. I spoke earlier to an architect from County Donegal. That architect advised me of approximately 20 such cases in north Donegal. Some of them have been resolved because the people involved, thankfully, had common sense and agreed that the boundaries were mistaken and the error was corrected. However, many have not been resolved and it has caused untold trauma.

The person who came to me originally faced a cost of €80,000 but nobody will accept any wrongdoing.

When I correspond with the Minister and go into detail on some of these incidents, she should not say that she cannot comment on this case or that case. I guarantee her that if she surveys her Deputy, Senator and councillor colleagues throughout the State, she will learn of numerous cases where the digitisation process has led to errors that have caused untold trauma. When she has investigated this, there will have to be mediation for the families. Ideally, the PRA would consider all the cases and accept that mistakes were made, but the reason it is not doing so and departmental officials have not asked it to do so is the risk of exposing the State to financial costs and damages. We should say we are going to put in place a dedicated mediation system though which people must resolve these issues before they end up in court.

There are many families right now who do not realise that what I have described has happened to them but who will realise it in due course when somebody opportunistically takes advantage. I have seen too many examples in my county and further examples have been brought to my attention in the past week, so much so that I decided that I would speak out about this matter today and appeal to the Minister, with whom I will correspond further, to intervene and carry out a review of the PRA's handling of this whole affair, which is totally and utterly unacceptable.

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