The Irish house-buying process is honestly mad.
Rant warning
In Canada, you make an offer, satisfy financing and inspection conditions, and within a few days the deal is usually binding. From there it is generally a predictable 30 to 45 day run to closing. In Ireland, buyers can be sale agreed for months with no binding deal.
That means paying for surveys, valuations, and legal fees while still having no certainty the seller will not walk away or that title issues will not drag the whole thing out.
A big reason Canada moves faster is title insurance. Rather than spending weeks doing exhaustive historical title investigations, a one-time policy can cover things like title defects, registration errors, undisclosed liens, fraud, and encroachments. Lawyers still review title, but title insurance often replaces a lot of bespoke investigation work. It is typically faster and cheaper.
Another major difference is that in standard residential deals, the same lawyer often acts for both the purchaser and the bank, so long as it is not a private lender. Yes, there is an inherent conflict, but residential transactions are usually pretty vanilla and everyone understands there is no confidentiality between the buyer and lender on anything material to the mortgage. The big upside is one less lawyer for the purchaser to pay.
So Canada has:
* binding status in days, not months
* title insurance replacing much of the slow title investigation process
* one lawyer for buyer and lender
* lower legal costs
* far less uncertainty
Meanwhile in Ireland, buyers can spend months in limbo while the clock, and the stress, keeps running.