Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister of State, Deputy McConalogue, for coming to the House. The Minister of State will stay with us for the next four Commencement matters.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I thank the Minister of State and congratulate him on his appointment. We are familiar with each other. We worked well in agriculture for a number of years. I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House. At 4 p.m. yesterday evening, I received a letter from the Department stating that, unfortunately, none of the Ministers from the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage were available to take my Commencement matter today but the Minister of State, Deputy McConalogue, had kindly agreed to take a response. The Minister of State is welcome and I thank him, but I want to put a marker down here as we start in the Seanad again. As we rarely get an opportunity to engage with a Minister, these Commencement matters are critically important to our constructive parliamentary dialogue. If the Department is listening in, I ask it to make some effort to have a Minister from the Department come in.I am going to set out a few concerns about Tailte Éireann and I do not really expect the Minister of State to know the finer detail of what I might say. Indeed, I did not know yesterday what I was going to say and hence an hour ago I changed my contribution. For any Minister or Minister of State to come here and be expected to read some sort of anticipated response is irrelevant and a disservice to the Department, the Minister or Minister of State and the elected Member. I hope that point will be taken on board.

The Minister of State will be very familiar with Tailte Éireann. It is the State agency responsible for property registration, property valuation and the national mapping service. It was established on 1 March 2023 and I was centrally involved in the pre-legislative scrutiny of all those matters as part of the Oireachtas joint committee on housing and local government. We dealt with this, which is a critical issue. Tailte Éireann was formed from the merger of the Property Registration Authority, the Valuation Office and the Ordnance Survey of Ireland. It is critical in the context of the registration of farmland and commercial properties. We can speak of government policy and the Town Centre First approach. I was in Waterford yesterday and heard stories about how nobody could find out who owned properties the local authority was involved with. It affects farmland, farm buildings and commercial properties and we must have a co-ordinated response with respect to the work of Tailte Éireann. An article published in Saturday's The Irish Timesraised a number of concerns about the body. I will reference some of them. The article states:

... Tailte Éireann, [has] been the source of "growing frustration" for solicitors involved in conveyancing and their clients, a Law Society committee has said.

Despite meetings between the registry and the conveyancing committee of the solicitors’ representative body, there "has only been limited progress" in having criticisms addressed, the committee has said.

The committee has been "forthright" in bringing to the attention of the land registration body the difficulties the changes are creating, but there is still a wide gulf between the two parties ...

That needs to be addressed.

There are critical changes required and I will touch on some of them. We need an immediate root and branch review of Tailte Éireann. That is my ask today. What is the issue? Does the body have sufficient resources? Has it the capability and skills with respect to IT resources and training? Has it initiated, engaged or spent great amounts on an IT system that is not fully operational? These are very pertinent questions in these days when we are talking about accountability, transparency and value for money. We need confidence in Tailte Éireann's capacity to provide an authoritative land and property database in a timely manner. It is not happening. Has it developed the appropriate and enhanced database systems required for this task? We want efficiency in relation to digital first and we want to look at the Tailte Éireann board's statement of strategy. Is it being implemented? Has the board the confidence in Tailte Éireann to do its job? There are the issues around local government and the Town Centre First approach.

In essence, I have no confidence in Tailte Éireann and many people do not either. Many solicitors are telling me clients are coming in and threatening to complain about them because of things clients feel they are not doing for them when in effect the buck stops with Tailte Éireann because of the way it is not dealing with issues in a timely manner. There are farm sales falling because of inefficiencies in Tailte Éireann. There are pubs and commercial buildings in Ireland falling because of Tailte Éireann. It is about the timely delivery of its mandate. This needs to change. I am asking for a review and am interested to hear what the Minister of State has to say.

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Senator for raising this. I congratulate him on his re-election and on a very fine vote. I congratulate Senator Joe Conway as well and welcome him to the Seanad. I congratulate Senator Maria Byrne on her re-election and of course also congratulate the Cathaoirleach on his election to the Chair, which is a great honour. He has my best wishes for his term of office.

On the Commencement matter Senator Boyhan has raised, I will certainly relay his opening comments on his understandable preference to have a Minister or Minister of State from the Department here. Tailte Éireann is an independent government agency under the aegis of the Department of Housing. Local Government and Heritage, as the Senator knows. As he outlined, it provides a property registration system as well as a property valuation service and also national mapping and surveying infrastructure for the State. Under section 8(6) of the Tailte Éireann Act 2022, which the Senator was involved in the pre-legislative scrutiny of, Tailte Éireann is independent in the performance of its functions. As such, the Minister does not have a role in the operational matters relating to its function. However, it is important we see it carrying out its functions in a very efficient manner and serving well the purpose for which it was set up under law by the State and which it is funded by the State to serve as well.

The continued increase in applications received for registration by Tailte Éireann year on year and challenges in recruitment for some time now have unfortunately contributed to an accumulation of applications for registration. To address this, Tailte Éireann has embarked on a targeted recruitment campaign where a significant number of new staff have are now being onboarded who, when fully trained, will allow Tailte Éireann to reduce waiting times for registration services. Tailte Éireann has advised me improvements have been made to date in throughput times, especially for cases that do not require mapping. The Department is confident that as the full complement of staff is successfully onboarded it will be in a position to reduce waiting times across all application types.

Outside recruitment, every effort is being made by Tailte Éireann to reduce application processing times, including implementation of the efficiency driving measures. These include revised procedures for more efficient handling of the large volume of applications that are lodged that are not in order to proceed to registration, a targeted approach to reduce the age profile of applications pending registration, revised internal processes aimed at reducing the volume of applications on hand which are not in order to proceed and remain under query and also an organisation-wide focus on reducing processing times with business process improvements now implemented across the organisation. Tailte Éireann also continues to promote its digital services and uptake of e-registration services where paperless application types are available to legal practitioners and financial institutions which will help to reduce processing times for all service users. It is understood from Tailte Éireann that where an application is lodged fully in order for registration the application will be registered without any long delay. Applications involving transfer of registered land where no change to the registry map is required are in the main processed within 15 working days. Processing times for transfers that require a change to the map and those requiring first registration of property are improving. Lodging parties may of course contact Tailte Éireann about specific cases at its email address, info@tailte.ie. Further information on specific cases is available and obtainable by Oireachtas Members by contacting the dedicated email address in respect of the body, namely, oireachtas@tailte.ie.

Victor Boyhan (Independent)
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I thank the Minister of State for the overview he gave. In summary, it is not working. Tailte Éireann is not delivering. People who want to do property transactions, whether for agricultural land, farms, pubs and commercial buildings, are having difficulties with Tailte Éirean and so are local authorities. It is simply not fit for purpose at this time. There is talk of a recruitment drive but this is after the body has been established. It acknowledges it needs a recruitment drive and training. We need to look at its IT systems. I am putting down a marker that this very day I am going to draft a number of parliamentary questions and submit them to colleagues in the Dáil I work closely with. Every week for the next five weeks there are going to be parliamentary questions put through Dáíl Éireann to draw out what the issues of concern are within this organisation.

I will finish by returning to the article, which stated "[Tailte Éireann] has told the solicitors' committee [of the Law Society] it is not an 'advisory body', cannot devote resources to checking every application for errors and intends to devote available staff to processing applications that are in order, according to the committee update". Quite frankly, Tailte Éireann has a responsibility to do more than that. If there are failings in the legislation we put through these Houses we need to look at that again. I am sending out a clear message it is not fit for purpose. I will today draft a number of parliamentary questions to submit to my colleagues in Dáil Éireann and I am going to keep on this case because Tailte Éireann is not doing what it should be doing.

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Senator. As I outlined earlier, there had been an increase in applications received for registration by Tailte Éireann year on year. In combination with the challenges in recruitment that have existed for some time, this has unfortunately contributed to an accumulation of applications for registration. I outlined in my initial response the steps Tailte Éireann has taken on recruitment and also the business steps they have taken to reduce application processing times, including trying to make the system more efficient.

I thank the Senator for raising this. I think we all agree it is important this service is provided in a timely fashion and done in a way that serves the public well. I will ensure the Department of housing is fully updated on the engagement here and continues to engage with Tailte Éireann on the issues the Senator has raised with the objective of ensuring the public is well-served by the service Tailte Éireann is tasked with providing under legislation.