With the current talk about the refund of payments made to Irish Water in relation to water charges the existing legislation that requires the seller prior to the sale of a home to pay all water charges to Irish Water and provide his solicitor with a certificate of discharge from Irish Water confirming payment will need to be abolished or modified.
If the water charges that are payable on a dwelling have not been fully paid to Irish Water before the closing of a sale of property the solicitor acting for the seller will ask the seller to provide the solicitor with a statement from Irish Water of the amount of water charges outstanding.
If the seller fails to provide the statement to the solicitor, the solicitor must request a statement directly from Irish Water of the amount of water charges outstanding.
The solicitor must then withhold the outstanding water charges from the net proceeds of sale after the discharge of all mortgages and other liabilities relating to the sale. The water charges must be remitted by the solicitor to Irish Water within 20 working days of the completion of the sale of the dwelling.
Hopefully this obligation will be removed before any refunds commence.
As it stands solicitors still have to comply with current legislation.
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