Remarks by President McAleese at the “Registering the World” international conference dinner
Remarks by President McAleese at the “Registering the World” international conference for Tercentenary of the Registry of Deeds
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. Martin and I are delighted to be here this evening to join in the celebrations of the tercentenary of the Registry of Deeds, and to extend a traditional céad míle fáilte in particular - one hundred thousand welcomes - to those of you who have travelled from abroad to participate. I was a law student once - one of those whose study of the land law and conveyancing was a key influencing factor in my decision to specialise in criminal law. So you have no idea of the extent to which I admire and am in awe of those who have made this area of the law their life’s mission and who have managed to get their heads around its giddying intricacies without suffering permanent psychological damage. If registering a jurisdiction as small as Northern Ireland defeated me as a student you can imagine the panic attack I would have had at the idea of registering the world but that was back then - almost forty years ago and this is now and somehow with Google Earth only a mouse click away the idea of Registering the World doesn’t seem as terrifying or unlikely as it might once have.
Mind you can I say in my defence that though land law and conveyancing were neither my best nor favourite subjects I did have the foresight to ensure that my best friend at law school was brilliant at both - and she is here this evening, I am delighted to say, now Registrar of Titles in Northern Ireland. Patricia, you and your colleagues are particularly welcome not just because of the excellent contemporary co-operation and collegiality between the Dublin and Belfast organisations but because of the shared heritage this anniversary brings to mind for, of course, up until 1923 the Registry of Deeds founded in 1707 and the Land Registry founded in 1892 covered the entire island of Ireland.
For three hundred years now the work of the registries has been directly implicated in the widely different episodes that make up the life and times of Ireland and her people, from the early relatively unsophisticated days when land ownership was the exclusive domain of an elite through the turmoil of land redistribution and widespread agrarian reform to these more egalitarian times when everyone has at least notionally the opportunity to chain themselves for life to a mortgage.
Through each of those episodes it has been important that there existed an accurate, credible and secure system of title registration. It is particularly critical in these days that we have a technologically smart, efficient, accessible system which is capable of facilitating the vast number of financial transactions that are core elements of our modern economy.
We are proud of the system we have, of its origins, its evolution and its adaptation to a hugely changed working environment. We are proud that the first man to attempt to register the world was an Irishman, Sir Robert Torrens, whose system devised for South Australia in the mid-nineteenth century became the inspiration for our Land Registry and for similar systems in Canada, New Zealand, Singapore and parts of Africa to mention just a few.
Today, almost 90% of Ireland’s landmass has been converted from the Registry of Deeds to the Land Registry and we have a newly established Property Registration Authority. If the pages on some of the five million memorials housed in the registries are yellowing and fading, the work of the registrars and staff is going in the polar opposite direction with the introduction of electronic registration and conveyancing.
This week’s conference provides us with an opportunity to look backwards, as well as forwards, and to celebrate our inheritance and the important role which the Registry of Deeds occupies in the legal and administrative heritage of Ireland. In its classic Gandon building we’ll find the signatures and seals of many famous figures from Irish history: Jonathan Swift, Wolfe Tone, Henry Grattan and Daniel O’Connell, William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Lady Gregory and Eamon de Valera. Who knows what its registrars will witness and live through in the three hundred years yet to come. We do know that the quiet, unassuming work undertaken there will be of great consequence to individuals and to our society - a part of our civic strength that it takes a birthday like this to shine a light of appreciation and gratitude on.
So on this birthday I thank all those who have made this work their life’s work. That we have a system as reliable as it is and as respected as it is thanks to you and your predecessors. I thank the Chairperson of the Property Registration Authority, Gerry McCaughey, and the Chief Executive, Catherine Treacy, for their kind invitation to join you here this evening. Enjoy the celebrations of an important milestone in Ireland’s history of title registration and I hope that from the Conference will come fresh insight, wisdom, experience and ideas, enough to launch the next three hundred years with renewed enthusiasm and energy and enough to torment the coming generations of unsuspecting and innocent law students.
Thank you