The Latest Developments with E-Conveyancing

For anyone who has bought or sold a home in Ireland, the conveyancing process can feel slow, paper-heavy, and oddly old-fashioned. Files travel by post, documents are signed in wet ink, and weeks can pass while one party waits on another. For years, “e-conveyancing” has been held up as the solution: a secure, largely paperless system that would allow solicitors, lenders, and the State to exchange information electronically and complete a sale in a fraction of the current time.

After a long period of discussion, the last few years have brought notable movement. A Government-backed reform programme is now underway, several practical changes have already taken effect, and the legal building blocks for a fully electronic system are gradually being put in place. Here at McCarthy + Co, we are following these developments closely because they will directly affect how quickly and smoothly our clients can buy and sell property.

What is e-conveyancing?

Conveyancing is the legal process of transferring ownership of property from a seller to a buyer. E-conveyancing simply means carrying out that process electronically, rather than on paper. In a mature system, the contract, the deed of transfer, the mortgage documentation, and the application to register the new owner would all be created, signed, exchanged, and lodged digitally through a secure central hub, with solicitors, lenders, and the land registration authority sharing information in real time.

The promise is significant. The Law Society of Ireland has long argued that a properly designed electronic system would dramatically reduce the total time it takes to transfer a property. The key point for buyers and sellers is that e-conveyancing is not a single switch that is flicked on. It is a programme of connected reforms involving faster access to title deeds, electronic signatures, digital registration, and the replacement of outdated paper formalities. Several of those pieces are already moving.

The cost of a paper-based system

The case for change rests on how long a typical transaction takes. The Government’s own Expert Group on Conveyancing and Probate found that a conveyancing transaction can take anywhere from around nine and a half weeks to twenty weeks, depending on the case and on who is asked. The Law Society has previously pointed to an average closer to twenty-two weeks.

Those delays are not abstract. They translate into:

• Buyers and sellers held in limbo, unable to plan moves, schools, or finances with certainty.
• Sale chains that collapse when one transaction stalls and others fall with it.
• Homes that sit empty while a transfer or an estate works its way through the system, reducing the supply of available housing.
• Additional professional and financial costs that ultimately fall on the consumer.

Reducing transaction times has therefore become a housing-policy objective, not merely a matter of professional convenience.

The eight-week target and the Implementation Group

The most important structural development is that conveyancing reform now has clear Government ownership and a measurable goal. Following the Expert Group’s 2024 report, an Implementation Group on Conveyancing and Probate was established in September 2024 under an independent chair, Dr Conan McKenna. It brings together the bodies whose cooperation any electronic system will require, including the Department of Justice, the Department of Housing, the Law Society of Ireland, Tailte Éireann, the Courts Service, the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland, and the relevant regulatory authorities.

The Group is working towards a national target of completing a conveyancing transaction within a maximum of eight weeks from the acceptance of an offer to closing, with a matching eight-week target for probate. By mid-2025, the Taoiseach reported that over half of the Expert Group’s recommendations had been implemented or were on track for short-term delivery.

Faster access to title deeds

One of the most practical reforms has already arrived, and it tackles a problem that has frustrated buyers and solicitors for years: the time it takes a bank or credit servicing firm to release title deeds so that a sale can even begin. Much of that delay was attributed to internal processing within lending institutions, including anti-money-laundering and customer due diligence checks.

Following sustained engagement by the Law Society, the Central Bank of Ireland addressed this in its modernised Consumer Protection Code, which now requires mortgage providers to release title deeds to the borrower or their representative within ten working days of a valid request, subject to limited exceptions. The revised Code took effect in March 2026, so this obligation is now in force. In practice, it removes one of the most common causes of delay at the very start of a sale, allowing the process to begin promptly rather than stalling for weeks or months.

Electronic signatures and the move away from wet ink

A genuinely electronic transaction requires electronic signatures, and this is an area where the legal position is more advanced than many people realise, but is not yet fully operational for every document.

Electronic signatures have been valid in Ireland for many years under the Electronic Commerce Act 2000 and, since 2016, under the EU eIDAS Regulation. The complication has always been that certain categories of document were carved out. In particular, section 10 of the 2000 Act traditionally excluded deeds and other documents that create or transfer an interest in land, which meant that a deed of transfer still had to be signed in traditional wet ink.

The position changed for registered land with the introduction of the Electronic Commerce Act 2000 (Application of sections 12 to 23 to Registered Land) Regulations 2022. These regulations open the door to electronic signatures on documents that acquire, dispose of, create, or register an interest in registered land. There is, however, an important practical caveat: electronic signatures can be accepted on land registration documents only once Tailte Éireann, the State land registration agency, has put in place a system to receive and validate them and has formally determined that it will do so. Until that operational step is complete, wet-ink signatures remain the norm for deeds in practice.

The remaining gaps are well understood and are being addressed:

• Contracts for sale can already, in principle, be concluded electronically.
• Deeds affecting registered land are now within the legal framework for electronic signing, pending the Tailte Éireann system going live.
• Unregistered title currently remains outside the scope of these regulations.
• The Expert Group has recommended amending the Registration of Title Act 1964 to remove the wet-ink requirement for registration, and the Minister for Justice committed in December 2025 to facilitating that change.

Replacing statutory declarations with Statements of Truth

A second longstanding formality is also being modernised. Conveyancing frequently requires a statutory declaration, a sworn statement that must be signed in wet ink in the physical presence of a third party under the Statutory Declarations Act 1938. This often means clients attending a solicitor’s office in person, sometimes more than once, simply to swear a document.

The Expert Group recommended that conveyancing be allowed to use Statements of Truth instead, which do not require the same in-person swearing and can be signed digitally. As the Law Society has explained, Statements of Truth are not yet permitted in the conveyancing process, but the Minister for Justice committed in December 2025 to bringing forward the legislative changes needed to allow them, including amendments to the Statutory Declarations Act 1938 to permit electronic and digital signatures. Once in force, this reform should remove a great deal of unnecessary travel, duplication, and delay for buyers and sellers alike.

eRegistration and Tailte Éireann

It is worth emphasising that Ireland is not starting from zero. A substantial amount of conveyancing is already electronic at the registration stage. Tailte Éireann operates an eRegistration service that allows solicitors to draft certain deeds online, circulate drafts securely, correspond electronically, and pay registration fees through a single platform.

Members of the public can already view any folio, see who owns a registered property, and check boundaries through landdirect.ie for a modest fee. In other words, the registration end of the process has been steadily digitising for some time, and the reforms now under way are about connecting that capability to the earlier stages of a transaction. That said, the Law Society’s own member surveys have highlighted persistent delays in completing registrations, so improving turnaround times at Tailte Éireann remains one of the central tasks of the reform programme.

What this means for buyers and sellers

It is important to be realistic about the current position. At the time of writing this, Ireland does not yet have a single, fully integrated e-conveyancing platform of the kind seen in some other jurisdictions. What exists is a sequence of reforms at different stages of completion: some already in force, some imminent, and some still requiring legislation or new systems.

For our conveyancing clients, the practical implications are as follows:

• The opening stage of a sale should become faster following the implementation of the modernised Consumer Protection Code.
• Many documents can already be handled electronically, and the range will widen as electronic signatures and Statements of Truth are rolled out across the process.
• Registration through Tailte Éireann is largely electronic, although completion times remain an area of active reform.
• The eight-week target gives a clear benchmark against which progress can be measured.
• A solicitor remains essential. Digital tools change how the work is done, but the legal duties around title, planning, taxation, and the protection of your money are unchanged, and the risk of fraud in electronic transactions makes careful professional oversight more important, not less.

Require legal assistance with buying a property?

At McCarthy + Co Solicitors LLP, we combine long experience in residential and commercial conveyancing with a close interest in the technology and law reform that are reshaping the process. Whether you are buying your first home, selling, or investing, our conveyancing team will guide you through every legal aspect of the transaction, keep your sale moving, and make sure your interests are protected at each stage. To arrange a consultation with a solicitor, simply complete our quick and confidential online form.