Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Like everyone else, I welcome the Minister of State to the House and thank him for his work on this legislation. I have been a Member for several years and I regularly see legislation introduced because we are approaching a deadline. That is not a good way to engage with legislation. Essentially, one's back is to the wall. We have seen this every year with the Special Criminal Court legislation. From time to time, we have technical legislation but this Bill is a little more than that. It is extremely important because the amount of trouble and hassle caused by uncertainty over rights of way within communities, among neighbours, among people living along the same road and even within families is incredible.

For years I was involved as a county councillor in making representations on behalf of people applying for planning permission. It was often the case that a son, daughter and another son all wanted to apply for planning permission to build on the one road. It is all great when everyone gets on but if there is a falling out in the family, it can be pretty scary. That is why this type of legislation is important. While we have to do what we have to do to sort this out by the end of the month, really and truly there has to be fundamental reform in this whole area. Rights of way should be registered. Local authorities should not be washing their hands of the matter. I agree with Senator Ward that a local authority needs to engage on this and invest resources. Local authorities need to establish offices internally to deal with this. So much that needs to be done should and can be done. The task is intricate, detailed and complicated but what is complicated can be simplified if there is the willingness to do so.

I have one more issue to raise while I am on the subject of rights of way, land and so on. I cannot understand why we have not embraced e-conveyancing. When somebody buys a property or house, it can take weeks, and in some cases months, for the transaction to go through, simply because of the conveyancing required, the exchange of documents and so on. We really need to embrace e-conveyancing. If we have learned anything during the pandemic, it is the benefit of embracing technology in the health service, especially in administration. There are general practitioners who would not have dreamed of emailing a simple thing like a prescription to a pharmacy until it was required of them because of the pandemic. We really need to up our game.When I was the justice spokesperson for Fine Gael, I had discussions with Senator Ward. We visited the Law Society, which has made great submissions on e-conveyancing. The Government never bought into it, but it is something that needs to be done. I would welcome further engagement with the Law Society. Perhaps Senator Ward and the other justice spokespersons in the Chamber might organise an evening in the new year when we can share ideas and learn from each other. With that, I thank the Minister of State again. I cannot see any reason this legislation will not go through the Houses, but I believe that a body of work needs to be done. Given the fact that we have more than three years left in Government, this is the time to do it. We were always wondering how long the previous Government would last. This Government should last long enough to sort out the problem.