It may be true to say that this is much more regulated elsewhere in Europe because of a widespread ignorance of the law in Ireland, not to mention enforcement agencies every bit as incompetent as the estate agents.

It is the case that the letter of the law is so different elsewhere because the source is the same, the European Community Unfair Commercial Practices Directive.2005/29/EC.

In Ireland this is implemented by the Consumer Protection Act 2007, whereby it is a prosecutable offence to fail the due diligence test, which is to say that the trader's duty is to do everything reasonably possible to avoid misleading or omitting information, to cause an average consumer to make a transactional decision that would not be made otherwise.

It is not therefore the case that an agent is entitled to sell a house with undeclared structural issues. The laziness of an agent is a strict liability criminal offence. Where it is possible to demonstrate an unfortunate effect, the culprit is guilty, with a small variety of allowable defences.

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