John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)
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1341. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the plans to establish a national will register; if there are any plans to progress with the legislation necessary to put it in place; the reason the Bill proposed in 2011, again in 2016, and again in 2021 was never progressed; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [59566/25]

Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail)
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The establishment of a register of the nature referred to by the Deputy has been suggested on a number of occasions, including in a number of Private Members Bills. Consultations with stakeholders, including the Law Society, have identified a number of important practical and legal obstacles to establishing such a mechanism.

Firstly, registration of a will would not guarantee its validity. For example, under Part VII of the Succession Act 1965, there are statutory requirements regarding the signing and witnessing of a will. The registration of the existence of the will would not prove that the will had been properly executed, or that the testator had sufficient capacity, or not been subject to undue influence or duress.

Secondly, a register could not guarantee or offer conclusive proof that a registered will was the last will of the testator because a new will could have been made by the testator at any time before a testator dies. The most a register could do would be to confirm that a particular will had been registered on a particular day. Such a register would not confer any priority over later wills if they were not registered, nor would it provide any guarantee that a registered will had not been revoked or replaced by a later will.

Accordingly, I have no plans at present to establish a national wills register.