Departmental Bodies Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-09 ============================================================ Christopher O'Sullivan (FF), Cork South-West We have some former Ógra Fianna Fáil membership in the Visitors Gallery. I thank Senator Boyhan for raising this issue. I will give him a detailed response. I hope there is some new material in there compared with what he has heard before, but in the response I think he will see that there has been an emphasis on recruitment and filling vacant posts, which I feel is acknowledgement from Tailte Éireann that it does not want to be a bottleneck in the process anymore and an acknowledgement that perhaps it has been in the past, but it is trying to smooth that out in terms of recruitment. Tailte Éireann is an independent Government agency under the aegis of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Tailte Éireann provides a property registration system, property valuation service and national mapping and surveying infrastructure for the State. Under section 8 of the Tailte Éireann Act 2022, Tailte Éireann is independent in the performance of its functions. As such, as Minister of State, I have no role in the operational matters relating to its functions. In 2023, a request for a planned increase in the pay bill subhead of Tailte Éireann's vote was supported by the Department and subsequently granted in the Estimates for 2024. As part of Tailte Éireann's resourcing strategy, an accelerated recruitment programme was launched in early 2024 to address the high volume of vacancies and strengthen operational capacities in response to the increasing service demands. The programme introduced standardised recruitment processes across internal and external mobility routes to ensure consistent and efficient staffing. Since its launch in February 2024, the Tailte Éireann resourcing team has focused on filling 147 priority roles. In addition, a further 276 vacancies, including 135 within the registration function, have been filled across Tailte Éireann through a combination of new hires, promotion and mobility placements. The remaining 71 active Tailte Éireann vacancies, 11 of which relate to the registration function, are currently progressing through various stages of the recruitment cycle with a target to reduce overall vacancy levels across Tailte Éireann to below 3% by the end of 2025. The continued increase in applications received for registration by Tailte Éireann year over year and challenges in recruitment for some time now have resulted in longer processing times for certain application types. Tailte Éireann has responded proactively to these challenges with a significant number of new staffing being onboarded and currently progressing through initial training. As a result, Tailte Éireann is now operating with increased staffing levels, which will support ongoing improvements in the delivery of registration services and contribute to the timely processing of applications. Tailte Éireann has advised me that improvements have been made to date in throughput times, particularly in relation to cases that do not require mapping. I am confident that as the full complement of staff are successfully onboarded, it will be in a position to reduce waiting terms across all application types. Outside of recruitment, every effort is being made by Tailte Éireann to reduce application processing times, including implementation of the following efficiency driving measures: revised procedures for more efficient handling of the large volume of applications that are lodged that are not in order to proceed to registration; a targeted approach to reduce the age profile of applications pending registration; revised internal processes aimed at reducing the volume of applications on hand that are not in order to proceed and remain under query; and an organisation-wide focus on reducing processing times with business process improvements now implemented across the organisation. Tailte Éireann also continues to promote its digital services and uptake of e-registration services where paperless application types are available to legal practitioners and financial institutions, which helps to reduce processing times for all the service users. It is understood from Tailte Éireann that where an application is lodged fully in order for registration, the application will be registered without any long delay. Applications involving transfer of registered land where no change in the registered map is required are in the main processed within 15 working days. Processing times for transfers that do require a change to the map and those requiring first registration of property are improving. There is a small bit more information there about how to access that information, but I would be interested to hear the Senator's views and thoughts on that detail. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-09/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-09