Madam, - Carol Coulter (July 23rd) revealed the Law Society's latest plan to cut the time it takes to make property deals.
The society's utopian proposal is revolutionary and will put Ireland to the forefront of the common law world if the scheme is implemented.
We are remarkably close to achieving the objective of creating an electronic environment through which property in Ireland may be transferred from one person to another. There are drawbacks and I would like to pick up on three of them.
Although it has been possible since 2000, when the Electronic Commerce Act was passed, to enter into legal relationships through electronic means, we have yet to achieve agreement on a protocol for the recognition of electronic signatures. This is a problem with an international dimension and one in which the Irish Government may have a small but influential role.
The second stumbling block is the removal of antiquated legislation in the area of conveyancing. The Land and Conveyancing Law Reform Bill was introduced in 2006.
This visionary piece of enabling legislation was not passed into law within the time promised. It seems that the present Minister for Justice simply does not have the appetite for it.
A third weakness in the machine, and perhaps the weakest of them all, stems from a paralysed system of local government that has failed to manage modern legal procedures in any type of cohesive way.
In particular, I refer to a planning regime that cannot be monitored because of the disparate manner in which it is administered throughout the country.
No method of electronic searching can succeed when it comes to buying or selling a house if the planning process cannot be tracked electronically.
As a first step, the Minister for the Environment should be challenged to introduce an amnesty enabling conveyancers to ignore the planning history of a house prior to a period of, say, seven years of the date of any intended transaction.
Action by the government in these three areas will help us on the road to utopia. - Yours, etc,
JUSTIN MCKENNA,
Adelaide Street,
Dún Laoghaire.