First Previous (PART I. Preliminary and General.) Next (PART III. Divers Amendments of the Principal Act.)

26 1942

REGISTRATION OF TITLE ACT, 1942

PART II.

Registering Authorities and their Officers.

The Registrar of Titles.

7. —(1) The Registrar of Titles shall be appointed by the Government and shall hold office at the pleasure of the Government.

(2) No person shall be appointed to be Registrar of Titles unless at the time of his appointment he is either a barrister-at-law or a solicitor who has practised his profession for not less than eight years.

(3) For the purpose of the next preceding sub-section of this section, service by a barrister-at-law or a solicitor in a situation in the Civil Service shall be deemed to be practice of his profession.

(4) Subject to the person appointed thereto being in good health at the time of his appointment, the office of Registrar of Titles shall be a pensionable office within the Superannuation Acts for the time being in force, and there may be granted either to the Registrar of Titles on his retirement or to his legal personal representative on his death such superannuation and other allowances and gratuities as might under the said Acts have been granted to such Registrar of Titles, if he had been appointed to the permanent civil service of Ireland with a certificate from the Civil Service Commissioners.

(5) Every Registrar of Titles shall hold his office on such terms and conditions and shall receive, out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas, such remuneration as the Minister for Finance shall from time to time direct.

(6) The Registrar of Titles shall retire on attaining the age of sixty-five years, but that age of retirement may, in the case of any particular Registrar of Titles, be extended by the Minister, with the concurrence of the Minister for Finance, to any age not exceeding seventy years.

(7) The person appointed under this section to be Registrar of Titles may also be appointed by the Government to be Registrar of Deeds, and if so appointed, he shall be known as the Registrar of Deeds and Titles, but the foregoing provisions of this section shall continue to apply to him in the same manner as if he had continued to be only Registrar of Titles.

(8) So much of section 8 of a pre-Union Irish statute passed in the 6th year of Queen Anne, chapter two, entitled “an Act for the Public Registering of all Deeds, Conveyances and Wills”, etc., as amended by section 2 of the Registry of Deeds (Ireland) Act, 1832, as enacts that the Registrar of Deeds and assistant registrars shall, previously to entering upon the duties of their respective offices, each enter into a recognizance in the manner and for the sum therein prescribed shall cease to have effect.

Officers of registering authorities.

8. —(1) There shall be attached to the central office and to each local office such and so many officers and servants as the Minister shall, from time to time, with the consent of the Minister for Finance, consider to be necessary.

(2) Every officer and servant attached to the central office or to any local office shall hold his position on such terms and conditions and shall receive, out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas, such remuneration as the Minister for Finance shall, from time to time, direct.

Local registering authority.

9. —(1) Subject to the direction and control of the Registrar of Titles in relation to such matters as shall be prescribed, every local office shall be under the management and control of the county registrar of the county in which such local office is situate, and the business of such local office shall be transacted in the Circuit Court Office in and for that county.

(2) Every county registrar (other than the county registrar for the county borough and county of Dublin) shall be a local registering authority for the purposes of the Principal Act, and references in that Act or in this Act to the local registering authority shall, notwithstanding anything contained in sub-section (7) of section 4 of the Principal Act, be construed as references to the county registrar (other than the county registrar for the county borough and county of Dublin).

(3) For the purposes of the Principal Act and this Act, the county of Cork and the county borough of Cork shall continue to be one county.

(4) This section shall have effect subject to the provisions of sub-section (3) of section 11 of this Act.

Exercise of powers of registering authorities.

10. —(1) All or any of the powers and duties conferred or imposed on the central registering authority by or under the Principal Act or this Act may be exercised and performed by such other officer or officers attached to the central office as the Minister may from time to time authorise in that behalf.

(2) All or any of the powers and duties conferred or imposed on any local registering authority by or under the Principal Act or this Act may be exercised and performed by such other officer or officers attached to the relevant local office as the Minister may from time to time authorise in that behalf.

(3) Sub-section (1) of section 11 of the Principal Act shall (notwithstanding the repeal thereof by this Act) be deemed to have been amended, as from the commencement of Part I of the Courts of Justice Act, 1924 (No. 10 of 1924), by the substitution of the expression “the Minister for Justice” for the expression “the Land Judge” wherever the latter expression occurs therein, and accordingly every nomination made by the Minister, after the commencement of the said Part I and before the passing of this Act, of an officer in or attached to the central office to exercise and perform the powers and duties of the central registering authority or of an officer in or attached to a local office to exercise and perform the duties of the local registering authority shall be and be deemed always to have been validly made under the said sub-section (1) as so amended, and nothing done by any such officer by virtue of any such nomination shall be invalid or capable of being questioned on the ground that such nomination was invalid.

Validation of the acts of certain persons.

11. —(1) Every person whose name is set out in the first column of the First Schedule to this Act shall, as from the date mentioned in, the second column of the said Schedule opposite the mention of such person's name in the said first column, be deemed to have been validly and effectually appointed under sub-section (5) of section 4 of the Principal Act, as adapted by or under subsequent enactments, to have the control and management under that sub-section of the local office in the county mentioned in the third column of the said Schedule opposite the mention of such person's name in the said first column.

(2) No act or thing done by any person whose name is set out in the first column of the First Schedule to this Act on or after the date mentioned in the second column of the said Schedule opposite the mention of such person's name in the said first column and before the passing of this Act in execution or purported execution of the functions or duties of a local registering authority under the Principal Act in the county mentioned in the third column of the said Schedule opposite the mention of such person's name in the said first column shall be invalid, ineffectual, or open to challenge merely on the ground that such person had not been validly appointed to be the local registering authority in that county.

(3) It shall be lawful for every person whose name is set out in the first column of the First Schedule to this Act to continue, after the passing of this Act, to execute the functions and duties of the local registering authority in the county mentioned in the third column of the said Schedule opposite the mention of such person's name in the said first column until whichever of the following events first happens, that is to say:—

(a) the Minister by writing under his hand terminates the right of such person to execute the said functions and duties, or

(b) such person dies or resigns the right to execute the said functions and duties, or

(c) the expiration of twelve months, or such longer period as the Minister, with the consent of the Minister for Finance shall in any particular case allow, from the date of the passing of this Act,

and, on and from the happening of whichever of those events first happens, the county registrar for that county shall become and be the local registering authority for that county under and in accordance with section 9 of this Act.