Seller's Legal Pack: Motion
Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-27
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Aubrey McCarthy (IND), University of Dublin

I thank the Minister of State for being here. I also acknowledge former Senator, Lorraine Higgins and the members of the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers, IPAV, including its CEO, Ms Genevieve McGuirk.
The reason I am bringing this up is, as many Members will know, I am involved in housing and homelessness and I see blockages. I am a member of the housing committee and I am involved in an approved housing body, AHB. Day to day, I constantly see people queuing to try to buy houses and there are blockages all the way. The motion I am putting forward goes to the very heart of how people in Ireland are experiencing the housing system, not just in theory but in their everyday lives and lived experience. Whether buying or selling a home, it is clear it is unnecessarily stressful, uncertain and costing a lot of money.
Housing accessibility is what this motion is all about. That is what it aims to facilitate. The proposal talks about establishing a statutory procedure whereby, when a seller of a property places the property on the market, a set of legal documents - the seller’s legal pack - will be compiled and advertised with the property and made available to potential buyers. Such documents will ensure that buyers have all the key information relating to the property and the conveyancing process is more efficient than it presently is.
By way of background, the seller’s legal pack was put forward previously. It was devised and championed by Pat Davitt, former CEO of IPAV, after many years of complaints and research from both property people and consumers alike. Those concerns over the years are well founded. The conveyancing process in Ireland has become inefficient, onerous and, in many cases, detrimental to people trying to buy or sell a home. What should be a straightforward transaction is often characterised by unavoidable delay. With the original Bill, IPAV sought to address these conveyancing issues and delays as a matter of legislative urgency. Those delays are now part and parcel of our housing market. They are contributing to property sales often falling through at a time of a severe housing crisis.
On average, it takes four months from the point a property is placed on the market to when the transaction finally closes and the person gets the keys. That period of uncertainty drives up costs, undermines confidence in the market and places enormous emotional strain on buyers and sellers alike. For most people, buying a home is possibly the biggest financial decision they will ever make. Far too often, after a property goes sale agreed, families are left in limbo. They are paying for all the surveys, evaluations and legal advice, etc., only to discover that late in the process there are unresolved issues such as issues with the deed, boundaries, etc., or maybe planning. That is not just inefficient; it is unfair.
I will provide an example. As an approved housing body, we were working on an apartment recently - I spoke about this at the housing committee today – and it took us eight months because all the paperwork was not in place. I spoke to one of my constituents, Keith. He is a wonderful guy from Greystones and he allowed me to use his example. Like so many people his age, he did everything he was told to do. He saved up and worked hard and, eventually, he went sale agreed on what he hoped would be his first home. He paid for the survey, evaluation and legal fees. He planned his whole life around this purchase. Weeks later, after all of that - let us remember that the mortgage had been approved and it had an expiry date - a title issue emerged. This title issue had existed long before the property ever went on sale and the sale collapsed and his loan offer expired. His outlay, savings and plans were badly hit. He was back at square one, still renting and paying sky-high prices. That is on top of carrying the emotional weight of his plans all going down the toilet when they should never have progressed as far as they did in the first place. The experience was not caused by recklessness or bad behaviour. Rather, it was caused by a system that withholds critical legal information from the purchaser, leaving people already financially and emotionally committed only for it all to fall apart. The seller’s legal pack would have saved Keith and his family time and money. It would have spared him months of stress and uncertainty at one of the most important times of his life.
We know his story is not isolated. Reporting in the national media highlights the emotional toll that the Irish home-buying process imposes on ordinary families. A feature recently in The Irish Times described how many people feel when buying a home, which is a process filled with frustration, uncertainty and endless back and forth, that they are fighting a mental war.
Their hope too often gives way to anxiety and then the offers, bids and timelines drag on without clarity. That is the lived reality of people trying to build stability for themselves and their families. What the seller's legal pack does is exactly what it says on the tin. It creates a statutory requirement for a pack to be made available when a property is marketable and placed on the market. If we front-load the conveyancing process and confirm the saleability of a property at the outset, transaction times should reduce by up to 50%. That would streamline costs, prevent gazumping and deliver greater certainty and transparency for the likes of Keith without imposing any additional costs on him or the seller. The seller's legal pack would reform the property sales process by allowing private sales to be treated exactly as they are doing with online sales where legal documentation is uploaded upfront and buyers know where they stand. It would therefore significantly reduce the likelihood of sales falling through due to delays or dues to loan approvals expiring, which is the reality that many families face.
International experience has also shown that this works in many other jurisdictions. Previous opportunities to address conveyancing delays in Ireland were well-intentioned but did not succeed. The voluntary pre-contract investigation of title, PCIT, did not deliver the change required even though it was launched with such fanfare. For over ten years, agents have guided vendors in line with proposals from the conveyancing and probate implementation group's best practice charter for solicitors and agents. That document itself has no teeth and is not making a difference. As a result, delays persist, imposing unnecessary costs and uncertainty on consumers. The seller's legal pack improves upon these voluntary approaches and is designed to work for conveyancers, solicitors, auctioneers and consumers alike.
The Housing For All conveyancing and probate implementation group drew on evidence from the Legal Services Regulatory Authority, LSRA, and they confirmed that Irish buyers are now facing longer timelines and higher costs than buyers from other jurisdictions. The group recommended an eight-week conveyancing target. That is easily accessible if upfront information is put with the property before it is marketed. That also reflects the programme for Government. Despite all of these well-intentioned negotiations, meaningful reform has not been delivered. The establishment of the expert group on conveyancing and probate nearly two years ago offered a real opportunity to address these issues. While there has been some progress in the probate aspect of it, no measures introduced today have materially reduced conveyancing delays. Measures such as the national e-conveyancing system, or any digital system, will only be as effective as the documentation that it requires from the outset. Again, if we do not front-load the conveyancing process, digitalisation alone will not shorten house purchasing timelines.
From IPAV's perspective, two simple issues remain. The first is the absence of mandatory standardised upfront legal documentation. The second is the lack of agreed communication timelines between the solicitor and the property service provider. Even the Law Society's own research shows that sales can take anywhere from six months to several years to complete. My own experience last year was that we bought a place in May and it closed in December.
In July 2025, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, raised concerns about the lack of the upfront information for home buyers. It specifically mentioned the seller's legal pack as a practical solution to that. The CCPC identified that ensuring the essential documents such as title deeds, BER certificates and planning and compliance, will short-circuit the process if they are available beforehand and it could reduce timelines from 17 weeks on average to eight weeks.
Support for this seller's pack is broad and it is genuine. It received cross-party engagement in the Thirty-third Dáil, including from the former Minister for Justice, Deputy Helen McEntee, who did not oppose it on Second Stage. It was supported by Opposition housing spokespersons and members of the Joint Committee on Justice. In July 2024, the committee completed detailed scrutiny and determined that the Bill should proceed to Committee Stage. It is also supported by leading property firms and by over 2,000 licensed agents across every county. This is nearly half of all the agents in the State. Public support is equally as strong. An Ireland Thinks survey found 77% of public support for this pack and it rises to 81% among younger adults, which is interesting. Of IPAV members, 97% report frustration with the current conveyancing delays and strongly endorsed this seller's pack. Housing accessibility, which I have always championed, is for consumers and they want this legislation. That is what this motion is trying to facilitate. It places the stated ambitions of the Government on a clear legislative footing and delivers practical, long overdue reform. It will reduce delays, reduce costs, and reduce stress for people.
In conclusion, the motion provides that the Government would: address the issues outlined in the report on detailed scrutiny of the Seller’s Legal Pack for Property Buyers Bill 2021; address the concerns about the conveyancing raised by IPAV and the Law Society of Ireland in their previous submission; liaise with IPAV regarding how a new and updated version of the seller's legal pack could be made possible; and bring forward an updated version of the Bill that will implement all the benefits of the original 2021 Bill within the timeline of the Government. If it is not possible to address all of the issues outlined in the report perhaps the Government would introduce a Bill or multiple Bills so that it is possible to avail of as many of the benefits as possible. I believe that this is achievable and is necessary to aid buyers and sellers. I have always said that when there is a blockage let us sit down and see how we can unblock it, so that is the proposal for this motion. I thank the Minister of State.

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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/2026-01-27/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:33+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-27