Report on Multi-Unit Developments - Law Reform Commission

y guarantee while new developments will be structured around the proposed
DAC (assuming that recommendation is implemented by the Oireachtas which
is unlikely to happen before 2010). 87 It can, at the least, be said that for those
larger developments clear external corporate regulatory systems will continue to
apply to them. In the case of the smaller developments governed by coownership
(which involves private contractual arrangements) there is currently
no applicable external regulatory regime.
3.96 The Commission is conscious that this might be said to involve the
potential for a confused regulatory picture in the future, in which there might be
a temptation either to use the least onerous regulatory regime or to imagine that
there could be complete ―contracting out‖ of the appropriate legal requirements
which the Commission recommends in this and other Chapters of this <strong>Report</strong>.
The Commission‘s recommendations involve the implication that those engaged
in the ownership of multi-unit developments should have a certain degree of
flexibility in the precise form of the legal structure which they choose,
particularly where the development involves less than 5 units. Equally,
however, the Commission is firmly of the view that all multi-unit developments
should be subject to certain core or minimum legal obligations in order to avoid
the kind of difficulties which the Commission has already identified. 88
3.97 The Commission has already applied the concept of imposing core
legal obligations to its general reform and modernisation of land law 89 and it
considers that a similar approach is appropriate in the case of multi-unit
developments. These core legal obligations would apply as the minimum
requirements applicable to all multi-unit developments, regardless of the precise
legal structure actually used. The key core obligations envisaged by the
Commission concern the essential governance arrangements which should
apply to all multi-unit developments 90 and the essential elements concerning
covenants and the associated use of such developments. 91 In this way, the
developments will conform to a set of basic universal requirements while at the
same time allowing those involved to incorporate additional requirements which
would be appropriate to the particular development. The Commission is also
87
See paragraph 3.26, above.
88
See the Introduction paragraphs 6-9, above.
89
See the Commission‘s <strong>Report</strong> on the Reform and Modernisation of Land Law and
Conveyancing Law (LRC 74-2005) and its <strong>Report</strong> on the Law of Landlord and
Tenant (LRC 85-2007).
90
See paragraphs 3.99- 3.108, below.
91
See paragraphs 4.65-4.83 below.
88