Land Registration in Ireland

Updated 28 March 2012

By international comparison, Ireland has a very extensive and well developed system of land registration.  Since the foundation of the Land Registry in 1892, there has been a gradual, ongoing and continuous programme of movement away from the older and limited system of recording Deeds (in the Registry of Deeds), to the more modern, flexible and comprehensive ‘title registration’ system provided through the Land Registry. 

93% of the total land mass of the State and almost 90% of the legal titles in Ireland are now registered in the Land Registry.   As the map below illustrates, almost all legal titles in several counties are now registered. This map outlines the extent of land registration in Ireland on a county by county basis as of March 2012.

Much of the progress in recent years has been facilitated by the successful roll-out of a major programme of state of the art Information Technology, the most notable of which have been :

·        Integrated Title Registration Information System - ITRIS - (1999-2002)

·        Digital Mapping Project  (2005-2010) and

·        Conversion of the entire register and associated indices from paper into a fully digitised format (2006-2009)

As a result of these projects there are now 2 million titles, representing almost 2.8 million individual parcels of land, registered in the Irish Land Registry and an extensive programme is underway to advance the registration of the remaining titles. 

In fact, compulsory registration now applies to all counties.

Compulsory Registration

Registration in the Land Registry is compulsory in the following cases:

1.         Land bought under the Land Purchase Acts

2.         Land acquired after 1st January 1967 by a statutory authority.

3.         *Certain transactions in relation to property located in the Counties and Cities listed in the table below:

*in the case of freehold land – conveyance on sale

*in the case of leasehold land – grant or assignment on sale