NPSRA Regulation Still in the Pipeline
Well, the title of the blog says it all. Whatever happened to the National Property Services Regulatory Authority, more often referred to as the NPSRA? Anyone who’s ever read my articles will be aware that I’ve been a long time proponent of regulation in the Irish property industry, particularly in relation to my own specialist area, the overseas market. Unfortunately it is a market that has, due to the lack of regulation to date, been infested with sharks.
This has a number of very unfortunate consequence, the most obvious being that Irish citizens lose money very regularly in overseas property transactions. Another consequence is that reputable agents in the market, which are quite numerous, get tarred with the same brush as the cowboys. In effect I’ve been pushing for regulation in the market here for the best part of a decade now. In 2006 there were signs that the government was going to do something about it, then all the good work that had been done seemed to have been put on the back burner as more pressing affairs of state, like our country’s economy going into a tailspin, took precedence.
It is good (I guess) to see that the idea of a regulatory authority for the property sector hasn’t gone away, it has just been progressing at the same rate as a snail stuck in super-glue.
On June 3rd last the NPSRA posted the details of the proposed legislation, which has now passed through the Seanad, and has
For fear of losing the few readers I’ve got I’m not going to put the whole document here, but this is how it opens, so you’ll get the gist – I left out the bits in Irish.
“An act to provide for the establishment of a body, to be known as … the Property Services Regulatory Authority, to control and supervise the providers of property services, to cause any complaints against those providers to be investigated and to adjudicate on any such complaints; to provide for the establishment of a body to be known as … the Property Services Appeal Board, to hear and determine appeals against certain decisions of the authority; and to profide for taking account of Directive 2006/123/EC in so far as it relates to property services; to provide for the consequential repeal or amendment of certain enactments and the revocation of a statutory instrument; and for related matters.”
You can read the full text of the document here if you’re that way inclined or in need of sleep inducing medication. Be warned, it is 125 pages of pretty turgid lawyer speak.
In any case, it’s good to know that there is some (albeit very little) movement in the proposed legislation to protect Irish property buyers – but it obviously doesn’t have the potential to gather as many votes as legislating for Head Shops does. If it did, the legislation would have been introduced immediately in 2006, rather than still crawling its way through the system four years later.
