Luke Flanagan (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent)
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To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the reason a property was sold to the beneficial owner (details supplied) in County Cork as a sale absolute by use of a S31 application which allowed the Minister for Finance to waive any interest vesting, under the State Property Act 1954, in the state on the dissolution of a company [7659/13]

Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour)
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Section 28 (2) of the State Property Act 1954, provides that the Minister for Finance assumes responsibility for all personal property and land vested in or held in trust for a body corporate (other than personal property or land held by such body in trust for another person) immediately prior to its dissolution. Upon the dissolution of the body corporate, such property becomes State property. This function transferred in July 2011 to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform under the Ministers and Secretaries (Amendment) Act, 2011 and S.I. No. 418/2011 Finance (Transfer of Departmental Administration and Ministerial Functions) Order 2011. The effect of Section 28 is that the Minister does not hold the assets of dissolved companies as beneficial owner. He holds them in trust. The title which the Minister acquires under this Section has been described as a defeasible title since, if the dissolved company is restored to the Register of Companies within twenty years of the date of its dissolution, its property is automatically restored to it. The State Property Act also includes, in Section 31, a power for the Minister to waive the interest acquired under Section 28 of the Act.

It is understood that the property which is the subject of the current question was held within a company which was struck off the Register of Companies in September, 1972 for failure to file annual returns with the Companies Office. The beneficial owner of the property applied to the Department of Finance for a waiver of the interest acquired by the Minister for Finance under the provisions of the State Property Act and that waiver, in respect of which the consideration was £160, was completed in October, 1986, approximately 14 years after the dissolution of the company. The effect of the waiver, which was not a sale by the State, would have been to allow the beneficial owner to complete the process of assembling a satisfactory title. The waiver itself would have formed only a limited element in the establishment of that title and the transaction was a normal exercise of Departmental functions. The price which the beneficial owner may have secured in a subsequent sale was not a matter for consideration in the context of the waiver.