Labour MPs Owen Bonnici, Charles Mangion and Michael Falzon have called for more certainty in Public Registry research and said the government must create a registry which would contain information of every tract of land in Malta and Gozo.
Speaking during the debate on the Notarial Profession and Notarial Archives Bill, they claimed the structure of the present Land Registry was undermanned and was no longer efficient. They underlined that all circumstances which dealt with the title of property should be collected in one central registry which could easily be created through information technology.
Dr Bonnici suggested a new system with regard to the title of property since the present research running into thousands of euros was leading to waste of resources and money. The government was aware of this but no improvements had yet been registered.
He said that PL had voted in favour of a Central Registry Act but despite the fact consultation had been ongoing, the government chose not to bring the legislation to the fore.
It was important that all legal documents pertaining to a property were readily available to notaries. These included notifications of expropriation orders, changes in house and street names and the freezing of assets as a consequence of criminal behaviour. Certainty should prevail since clients paid good money for research.
Moreover, there was also the need to register contracts of lease in the same way promises of sale were being registered.
Dr Bonnici said that power of attorneys should be safeguarded and should not be issued without proper vigilance. Abuses should be minimised.
Dr Mangion said burdens on property and powers of attorney had to be registered at the Public Registry. He called on the government and the Joint Office to register, as early as possible, expropriation of land and Church property under Annex A respectively.
He also called for one prescriptive period of not more than five years in the case of annulment of contracts. The clause on discretionary trust where banks acted as trustees needed re-examination.
Earlier, Dr Mangion condemned abuses by a very small number of notaries. Notarial responsibility was being increased and the professional indemnity insurance was a step forward. Those who were repeatedly negligent in their work had to be made to pay higher premiums depending on their liability.
Notaries should be bound to check that a property is covered by Mepa permits but architects should bear the burden of checking on such permits.
Dr Falzon said there was a crying need for more certainty in Public Registry research, especially in cases where official baptismal names were misquoted by too many people, such as Joseph, Joe or Ġiuseppi.
Other problems of uncertainty would be alleviated by the mandatory use of ID card numbers, birth certificates and, in the case of contracting companies, company and MFSA registration numbers. The Public Registry should refuse cognisance of any deed in which any part of this information was missing.
Among other things the Bill was about strengthening people’s security of title, but some important aspects could still be lacking in it.
Up to 1981 there had been efforts towards a Land Registry Act for a system based on property, but these efforts had failed. Unfortunately many notaries tended to attach secondary importance to the Land Registry, which today handled greater complications involving huge properties of large value. Too many of these cases involved overriding government interests and long-drawn-out lawsuits.
The Bill should make it clear how a prescription could be interrupted. This should be made registerable.
The fact that acts published years ago were not yet in the notarial archives, with some notaries being in arrears by many years, constituted a serious problem. It must be made clear that by a pre-determined date that all acts in arrears must be copied in the archives. Besides things being done as they should be, this would help the profession in general.
Nationalist MP Ċensu Galea also referred to research, saying customers might think they were completely covered. Problems occurred when property had no architectural plans. He pointed out that the notary had no obligation to check that architectural plans matched the actual property layout.
Referring to the problem of land registry, when a property had to be marked on an architect’s drawing, one would realise that a number of properties overlapped. Changes and updating of houses’ numbers in architectural plans were required to avoid confusion.
Mr Galea asked whether penalties of €1,000 and €5,000 in cases when a notary abused the system should be increased. The fines were too low when compared with the value of property contracts.
Winding up the debate, Parliamentary Secretary Jason Azzopardi said he would shortly be handing Dr Mangion new regulations going into detail on how notaries should handle research. Reports which each notary would have to make to confirm that research would have been meticulously done would add a new dimension of trust to the profession.
Although the Public Registry Act was now in committee stage, he said he would be introducing a Central Registry Act in Parliament.
The Bill would be empowering the council to ensure that no notaries would give false certification of practice. He said notaries’ impartiality would be strengthened by widening the range of cases where they could not accept to publish deeds.
Also worth considering, he said, was the suggestion by Philip Mifsud (PN) that customers should be able to pay taxes directly to the government rather than to a notary.