The Conveyancing Committee has been asked to give guidance to solicitors acting for clients in the following situation. The owners are seeking to sell a single house in a rural area that is accessed over a lane or road that is not in charge of the local authority. The purchasers insist on the vendor registering a right of way through the PRA under section 49A or getting a court order and registering that order to provide the purchaser with a legal right of way.

The committee wishes to draw the attention of practitioners to one possible solution to this problem. If the property and the servient tenement were part of a holding that was vested in the owners by the Land Commission, and having regard to the fact that 89% of land passed under the Land Purchase Acts, the Land Law (Ireland) Act 1896 may solve the problem.

Section 34 of that statute reads as follows:

1. A holding vested in a purchaser by a vesting order under this act shall continue to have appurtenant thereto and to be subject to, as the case may be, any previously existing easements, rights, and appurtenances; and any privilege previously in fact enjoyed, whether by permission of the landlord or otherwise, in such manner and for such time that, if the holding had belonged to a different owner from the rest of the estate, it would have been an easement or right, shall be an easement or right within the meaning of this section, and shall be appurtenant to or exerciseable over the holding, as the case may be.
2. The vesting order may, if the Land Commission think fit, declare that the sale is made subject to or free from any particular easement, right, or appurtenance, and such declaration shall have full effect.
3. This section shall extend to any sale or declaration of title made by the Land Judge in pursuance of the Landed Estates Court (Ireland) Act 1858, in like manner as if it were herein re-enacted with the necessary modifications.

It will be seen from the section that it would be necessary to inspect the vesting order before any conclusion could be drawn, as the outcome can vary from one case to another.