Joanna Tuffy (Labour)

I move amendment No. 4:

In page 5, before section 3, to insert the following new section:

"3.—Part 2 of this Act shall cease to apply to the registration of new deeds as and from the date on which the Act of 1964 is applied by the Minister so as to require compulsory registration of title throughout this State.".

This amendment is more for discussion purposes, particularly in the context of the new proposal that the Minister has for the authority. Much more needs to be done to try and extend the system of compulsory registration of title. As far as I know, the last time this issue was dealt with was in the Registration of Title Act 1964. Three counties have this system of compulsory registration but there has been no progress on the matter since. There has been considerable progress as regards certain lands that have been registered by developers where they are carrying out large schemes and local authorities have registered a considerable amount of land but there is still much to be done in terms of individual houses. A large part of the discussion of this Bill on Second Stage related to how wrong it is that title must be inspected each time by going through each document and searches must be carried out on all the different stages. If title was registered in the Land Registry, the conveyancing work would be substantially reduced in that there would be one basic title document to look at if one wanted to carry out a search. I do not think searches can be totally dispensed with because there is always the chance that someone will have done something with land. There is only one basic search that must be carried out if title is registered with the Land Registry. One merely has to look at what is on the title rather than looking through individual documents.

I hope this authority does deal with it but if an authority is set up, there is no guarantee that it will prioritise this issue. I would like to know what the Minister intends to do to ensure that title is registered and some progress is made with regard to the issue raised by this amendment.