Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. She is quite right when she says that the share of the independent conveyancers is quite small. However, they have put manners on the established soliciting firms, to use a colloquial term. Their costs for conveyancing are much lower. I do not care how many new conveyancers there are. We have to get away from the system that involves 1.5% of the price of a house, or approximately €5,000 in the case of a semi-detached house in Dublin. The work in question can be done for £250 across the water. That is totally uncompetitive. Perhaps it will take a handful of conveyancers to induce that competition, as the Minister has said. Previous evidence from the Prices Commission and other bodies has suggested that conveyancing is used in solicitors' firms, particularly in the bigger firms, to cross-subsidise many of their other activities. The house purchasers about whom we were concerned when we introduced the residential tenancies Bill and other legislation get a bad deal from the present way Ireland organises the conveyancing monopoly held by solicitors. We know that they would do far better in the UK. We also know that it does not take many of the new conveyancers to secure a more competitive outcome. I do not see the need to keep waiting around on this issue, which has been an urgent one for well over 30 years.