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GAZETTE
I E Í W Í P 0 1 I N I T
Free t he Land Regist ry!
MARCH 1994
What has happened to the plans to
convert the Land Registry and
Registry of Deeds to semi-State
status?
In 1988 the Law Society proposed that
both Registries should be taken out of
the mainstream of the Civil Service
and reconstituted as a public
corporation so as to allow them
freedom to operate as commercial
entities. The Society made the case
that if this were done, they would be
better able to provide "a cheap, simple
and effective system of registration" -
the stated reason for their existence.
An analysis of the workload of the
Land Registry showed that, at a time
when demand for Registry services
was growing (the number of
applications to the Registry increased
by 10% from 1981 - 1988), staffing
levels had actually decreased by 23%
with a resultant deterioration in the
quality of the service. At the same
Ome, income from fees in most years
exceeded State expenditure on the
Registries, all of which tended to
show that with the right management
approach, the service could be
improved and additional income
generated.
R was also apparent to the Society in
1988 that the Registries were
Providing a service that was capable
°f being run on commercial lines and
could, at a minimum, be self-
financing. Not surprisingly, therefore,
the Law Society advanced the view
that if the Registries were in a
Position to chart their own destiny, to
re-invest any surplus generated from
fees in developing their services, and
had the freedom to recruit their own
staff, ultimately a better service would
be provided to the community.
In 1990, the Government announced
that it had decided, in principle, to
change the status of the Land Registry
a
nd the Registry of Deeds to that of a
semi-State organisation and in July,
1992, the then Minister for Justice,
Padraig Flynn TD,
appointed an
interim board, on a non-statutory
basis, to oversee the changeover.
Over four years on, the legislation
needed to effect the legal
transformation has not materialised
and the move does not seem any
nearer. Moreover, it now appears that
the energies of the interim Board and
the management team in the Land
Registry have been diverted to coping
with the problems generated by the
Government's decision to relocate
part of the Registry to Waterford City
in line with its policy of decentralising
Civil Service Departments and State
services. It is ironic that a Board
established to oversee a new status for
the Land Registry should now fall
prey to one of the drawbacks of being
linked to the Civil Service.
Whatever merit there may be in a
policy of decentralising Government
Departments - and we can see the
force of the argument for it in
economic terms - the timing of this
decision is, to say the least,
unfortunate. At a time when the new
Board is attempting to put in place a
whole new infrastructure, new
management systems and develop and
cope with a new information
technology policy, why it should have
to cope with such dislocation and
disruption is difficult to understand.
Staff in the Registries perform
complex work and a high degree of
training is required. In the event that a
large number of staff decide not to
transfer to Waterford - and that is
likely to be the case since there will
be no compulsion - there is bound to
be a time-lag while new staff are
properly trained and gain experience.
The consequences, in terms of
increased delay to users of the service,
are obvious.
Another major problem facing the
new Board is that it does not have
freedom to organise the financing of
essential expenditure programmes
needed to put in place the proper
infrastructure and, consequently, is
totally dependent on the State for its
budget. This means that the Registries
have to take their place in the queue
with other Department of Justice
services and, of course, inevitably get
squeezed. Given that the Registries
are capable of operating on a
commercial basis and generating
income, this is difficult to understand
and the question must be asked why
the Board cannot, at this stage, be
authorised to borrow.
Delay in the Land Registry has been a
sorry fact of life for solicitors for
many years now. Solicitors have
frequently been on the receiving end
of the justifiable ire of clients whose
land transactions are held up. Such
delays frequently act as a brake on the
commercial life of the country by
impeding property transactions in both
urban and rural areas.
Given the constraints under which
they operate, the Registrar and her
staff have made enormous strides in
recent years in implementing
computerisation and improving
efficiency. It is fair to say that they
have shown themselves well capable
of driving the future development of
the Registries if they were given the
freedom to do so. Instead, they remain
in unsuitable premises, starved of
resources and now have to contend
with the added problems posed by the
decision to decentralise.
The Law Society believes that we
must have a Land Registry and a
Registry of Deeds that are in a
position to preserve the services they
provide and to extend the range of
those services. The Registries must
have full control of the resources they
generate, freedom to plan and develop
their services, and freedom to recruit
and train staff as appropriate.
(Continued overleaf)
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