Vol. 541 No. 2
166 Mr. Deenihan asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform if he plans to ensure that the Land Registry Office will become a digital office in the near future; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16816/01]
The Land Registry has been in the process of implementing computerised systems to manage its records base for several years. This task commenced in the early 1980s with the computerisation of the folios – the main records of ownership – for land in Dublin and this programme was later extended to the new folio records created for land in Counties Galway, Mayo, Sligo, Clare and Roscommon. Throughout the 1990s continual innovations and improvements were introduced including computerised application tracking systems for all counties.
In July 1999, a major advance was made with the introduction of an integrated title registration information system – ITRIS. This system, which is designed to electronically store and manage information in relation to title registration, is being rolled out on a gradual basis across the organisation. ITRIS is currently available in nine counties serving over 60% of the applications lodged in the Land Registry. It will be extended to County Waterford in late October 2001, to Counties Kerry and Limerick during January 2002 and it is planned to have it operational in all counties by the end of 2002. A key element of this new system is electronic access service – EAS. This enables customers of the Land Registry, who subscribe to the service, to conduct on-line searches of folios and name index records through the Internet where the folios are held in electronic format and to order copies of certain documents electronically.
The EAS is one of the flagship initiatives undertaken under the Information Society Action Plan and Electronic Government programme. The Land Registry was the first Government Department or office to go live with such a system. The EAS is already operating very successfully and over 2,500 customer accounts are currently in operation. A measure of its success is that almost 1,000 business transactions each day are being electronically undertaken by customers of the service.
The Land Registry has been in operation since 1892 and manages a vast resource of records and ownership documents. At present, approximately 400,000 folios, or less than 25% of the total, are in electronic format with the balance held as paper documents. The Land Registry is currently implementing a strategy to systematically convert these into computerised formats and a major project will commence shortly to capture the remaining paper folios and their associated "filed plan" maps. When this project, which will be undertaken on a county by county basis over a three year period, is complete, all folios and file plan maps held by the Land Registry – estimated at over 6.4 million images – will be available to customers in electronic format, both directly from Land Registry offices and over the Internet.
