David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I second the amendment. The process of conveyancing, as I understand it, deals with legal aspects of the transfer of property from the vendor to the purchaser. It does lead to excessive costs. I know of situations, for example, in which a house has been sold and resold and they go through the whole rigmarole of going back to 1787. That happened in my case many years ago. The house was sold and then immediately sold back to me and the solicitors insisted on doing the whole yoke again. It is just drudgery work; checking up on all the deeds, transfers, purchasers and all that kind of stuff. There is no necessity for it to be done half a dozen times when there are no changes in title involved. I do not see why there should not be a conveyancing and then the conveyancing is lodged in the conveyance office or wherever it is and unless there is a change in status, it does not have to go all the way back to stage one.

It is just a simple transaction that should not cost thousands of euro. One buys a house, one has the deeds and they are certified. I have a house that was built in 1787 and they went back all the way to 1787, and then they went back again, a second time, to 1787. The work should have started in 1978 or whenever I bought the house. Everything up to then had already been certified and lodged, so it was accepted. Why the hell should it not be accepted up to the point that it was lodged previously and anything else could be checked after that but they go through this rigmarole of going all the way back. It does not matter very much in a modern house because it may be the first purchase or first transfer of ownership but when one has a Georgian, Victorian or Edwardian house, it matters and it is complete nonsense to have people going backwards all the time to the beginning. This is a good amendment and I am very happy to support it. I am sure the Minister is also against the monopolistic provision of legal services and the amendment attacks that quite directly. I approve of the amendment and I am happy to second it.