Changes introduced in 2023 by the Land Registry, now Tailte Éireann, have 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, it said in an update.
The changes are leading to an increasing number of registration applications being rejected “at a time of national crisis in housing”, the committee said.
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The Land Registry is where property ownership or title is registered and property deeds are filed. It has been compulsory for unregistered property purchased in Ireland to be registered with the registry.
The registry, according to the Law Society committee, introduced the changes to increase internal efficiencies and now rejects applications once it finds a “first rejectable reason” rather than engaging with the solicitor about the application generally.
It has told the solicitors' committee 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.
“The Land Registry has explained that staff have an increasing workload, both due to increasing numbers of applications generated by simple demographics but added to by the staffing issues and continuing changes in the banking market, with large numbers of charges being transferred, in addition to transfers of the underlying properties,” the update said.
The solicitors’ committee told the registry the changes have made the system worse rather than better, that solicitors now find themselves having to make multiple lodgements of the same applications, and that rejections are sometimes based on errors made by the registry staff.
“In previous practice, these errors might have been addressed in correspondence while an application was held by the Land Registry and the solicitor was afforded an opportunity to remedy it without the need for a formal rejection,” the update said.
Efforts to secure a comment from Tailte Éireann met with no response.
