Jim O'Keeffe (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Question 516: To ask the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform if his attention has been drawn to the fact that for some time the Land Registry Office has been returning original title documents to owners or their solicitors using ordinary post rather than registered post; his views on whether a safer procedure would be to have the Land Registry Office revert to registered post in view of the number of original documents which have been lost in the post in recent times. [32030/05]

Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)
Link to this: Individually | In context

The Land Registry and Registry of Deeds are satisfied that they have taken adequate precautions in their postal arrangements to ensure safe delivery of irreplaceable original documents which have not yet been registered or recorded. I am informed by the Registrar of Titles that, in general, original title documents are retained and filed in the Land Registry after registration and are not returned to the applicant or the lodging party. I am further advised that the policy in Land Registry is to return documents by registered post when applications for registration which are rejected, withdrawn, abandoned or refused; documents which relate to unregistered title; and original documents taken from a pending dealing and returned to the lodging party for amendment.

In the case of Registry of Deeds applications, original deeds lodged by post are returned to the lodging party by ordinary post once the deed has been recorded in the registry. This system represents a cost effective method of transporting the large volumes of deeds processed and recorded by the Registry of Deeds. When an application is being queried by the Registry of Deeds, all documents are returned to the lodging party by registered post. It is not the general practice among solicitors to lodge original documents to the registries by registered post.