Legal costs associated with property transactions could be reduced significantly if new proposals to simplify conveyancing law are implemented, a conference in Dublin will hear today.
Speaking ahead of the event, Prof John Wylie, professor of law at Cardiff University, said the proposals, contained in a report of the Law Reform Commission (LRC), would help to speed up the purchase and sale of homes, thereby reducing transaction costs and trading uncertainty.
The proposals include the abolition of a large body of legislation "stemming from the feudal age", the registration of all land titles in the State, a possible planning amnesty, and the creation of an e-conveyancing system for future transactions.
"When this eventually comes on stream I suspect it's going to result in a complete rethink in how you charge for conveyancing," said Prof Wylie, an international expert in land law who acted as legal researcher for the LRC in the drafting of its consultation paper.
The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, has expressed support for the reform proposals, and is planning to publish legislation on the issue by autumn 2005.
In the recent Estimates, the Minister allocated €5 million for a new Land Registry digital mapping project, which is expected to begin next year. A Bill has also been tabled in the Oireachtas which will start the process of abolishing antiquated land law statutes.
Mr Seamus Carroll, of the Department of Justice, said yesterday it seemed astonishing that conveyancing law had remained unreformed for so long.
Speaking at a press briefing ahead of today's conference, he said, "the substantive law that we have is what you actually encounter if you read Sense and Sensibility or Bleak House. That is the law we are still dealing with even though that was all replaced in England and Wales in 1925".
As well as calling for the repeal of more than 100 pre-1922 statutes, the LRC report recommends a single registration scheme for land and titles that would make the paper-heavy "registry of deeds" system obsolete.
Some 90 per cent of the State's land mass, but only 80-85 per cent of Irish titles, are currently registered with the Land Registry.
In contrast, "99.99 per cent" of property in England was now registered thanks to moves towards computerisation, said Prof Wylie.
The dual system of registry, combined with antiquated law, meant event the most straightforward conveyancing transactions could take weeks. Of the reforms, he said, "It's not just law students who are going to be pleased with this. It's the general public."
Prof Wylie will give the keynote address at a conference on Modernising Irish Land and Conveyancing Law at UCD today. The event is part of a consultation process being conducted by the LRC ahead of the publication of its final recommendations to the Minister.
