Seller's Legal Pack: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-27 ============================================================ Cathal Byrne (FG), Cultural and Educational Panel I thank our colleagues for tabling the motion and I welcome the Minister of State. I have a unique perspective on this. I am a solicitor and I run my own practice in Enniscorthy in Wexford where we specialise in property, conveyancing and probate. In a past life I lectured with the Institute of Professional Auctioneers and Valuers on conveyancing and property law, bringing along the next generation of auctioneers. I have seen this from many different perspectives, and one of the most frustrating things I have seen is that in so many standard property transactions it is only when a sale is agreed, and a willing buyer meets a willing seller who agree a price, that the legal process starts and a solicitor is engaged. Most people only hire a solicitor when they have gone sale agreed. At that stage the process starts with requests for title deeds from the bank. This can take anywhere from two weeks to three months. Then we have to gather up the contracts. When the house had been bought 20 years ago there was no such thing as the property tax, a non-principal private residence discharge or a certificate of compliance for the back kitchen that was put on afterwards. All of these documents now have to be gathered up and that takes another two to three months. At this stage, the person who has agreed to buy the house is five months in and still has not seen a contract. The reality is that this happens far too often. It is the same with probate cases. So many families make the decision to put the family home on the marketplace and sell it before probate is granted. In my experience this leads to so much frustration. The transaction can go sale agreed, with the buyer and the seller agreeing a price and everything being fine, except probate takes anything from between six months to two years and, unfortunately, until probate is granted the sale cannot be closed. Everybody is stuck in limbo. Everybody wants to close the sale, move the transaction forward and be finished with the deal but, unfortunately, it just cannot be done. This is an area to tease out in more detail and bring forward some of these measures to see how they would work. I do not believe the conveyancing system we have in the country at present can be revolutionised. It has to be incrementally changed with one or two changes a year, and over a ten-year period we will have revolutionised the system. There have been advancements in moving from the Registry of Deeds and the land registry system. I heard the earlier comments about the frustrations Senators have had in their interactions with Tailte Éireann and I share so many of these frustrations. I have found that at times, depending on when applications are lodged, what county they are based in and where they made, there is a different processing time. This is a national organisation and it should never be the case with a national organisation that it operates to different times at a local level. It is the same with the probate offices. In County Wexford at present, which is where I am based, the probate officer is shared with County Waterford. If there is a probate district, it should have its own probate officer. If we are compelled to lodge an application in the county where we are, there should be a full designated team within the set-up. This is not to take from the good work that the probate offices do but they need more resources. People talk about the frustrations they have with buying their first home. The reality is that when all of the delays that exist in the system are compiled, it is incredibly frustrating. As far as people are concerned, they have agreed to buy a house and they have agreed the price they are going to pay so they should be able to sign a few papers and it is all done and it happens. The course run for auctioneers provides really good detail on the conveyancing process and how it all works. Having gone through the solicitors' training course, perhaps the same detail is not there compared to what the auctioneers are doing on the other side. There is an opportunity for a bit more collaboration between the two professions. Perhaps this is something that can be looked at also. I have a lot of concerns about where the solicitor profession is going in rural areas and about the sheer lack of trainees in rural practices. In a situation where everybody relies on a solicitor to make a will or buy and sell a house, or perhaps something else that comes up along the way, I am worried that in ten, 15 or 20 years we will see the same situation as we have with access to GPs. If we do not put in place proper mechanisms to ensure trainees are trained up in rural counties and remote areas, the profession will not be there. I certainly agree with a lot of the points raised here. In my experience there are a lot of changes that could be made. I have heard time and again about the idea of e-conveyancing but if we changed the simple practical things I have outlined, we would probably knock six months off a standard property transaction. --- 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