Official Land Registry Document
Instrument Copy
Quick Answer
An Instrument Copy for a Glasnevin property is a copy of a document lodged with the Land Registry — a transfer, charge, covenant or grant of a right of way. The folio records that the burden exists and gives its number; the instrument is where the terms are actually written. In Glasnevin, where great institutional grounds sit beside tree-lined avenues laid out to strict covenants, boundary and building-line instruments recur through the record.
A Part III entry on a Glasnevin folio tells you that something affects the land without telling you what it requires. The Property Registration Authority retains the document behind every such entry, and the Instrument Copy is how it is read.
Official Land Registry Document
Instrument Copy
Location
Glasnevin
County
Dublin
Online Delivery
Delivered online via email
An Instrument Copy is a copy of a document actually lodged with the Land Registry — a transfer, a charge, a deed granting a right of way, a deed imposing covenants, a vesting order. When such a document is lodged and registered, the folio records that the interest exists and gives the instrument its own number. The document itself is retained, and the Instrument Copy is how you read it.
That division of labour is the whole point of the product. A folio will tell you that a right of way exists over your land, and it will identify the instrument that created it. It will not tell you how wide the right of way is, where exactly it runs, who is responsible for maintaining the surface, whether it is limited to agricultural use, or whether it may be used by anyone other than the owner of the dominant land. Every one of those questions is answered in the instrument and nowhere else.
Glasnevin grew up around large institutional holdings — a vast cemetery, the botanic gardens, college and religious grounds — and the planned residential avenues built between and around them. Institutions of that kind generate boundary agreements, rights of way and wayleaves, while the avenues were laid out under covenants controlling building lines, use and boundaries. A Glasnevin folio can therefore carry an institutional boundary right or a strict residential covenant depending on where the plot sits, and only the instruments distinguish them.
Ordering therefore usually starts from the folio rather than from the instrument. The Part III entry gives the instrument number, and that number is what identifies the document to be copied. If you do not have it, a folio search establishes it first, and it is entirely normal to order the two together — the folio to find out what burdens exist, the instrument to find out what each of them actually says.
Different questions need different documents:
| Situation | Recommended Document |
|---|---|
| Find out who owns a property in Glasnevin | Folio Search |
| See what burdens are registered against it | Folio Search |
| Read what a burden actually permits or requires | Instrument Copy — — this page |
| Prove the register entry to a lender or court | Certified Folio |
| Prove the registered extent | Certified Map |
The full text of the instrument as lodged and registered
The parties to it, and the date it was executed and registered
The operative provisions — what was granted, transferred, charged or covenanted
Any plan or schedule annexed to the document
Conditions, reservations and exceptions attaching to what was granted
The instrument number and the folio it is registered against
Reading a building-line covenant on a planned avenue
The transfer sets out how far forward and to what line a house may be built.
Checking a boundary agreement with an institution
Ground beside the cemetery, gardens or college carries agreed boundaries and rights.
Checking service charge obligations on an apartment
The deed establishes what is payable and how it is calculated.
Investigating a right of way over a shared avenue or lane
Access arrangements between plots were granted by deed.
Checking a Tolka drainage or flood wayleave
Ground near the river carries registered rights of entry and restrictions.
Examining a charge before redemption
The deed sets out what is secured and on what terms.
Reading a single-dwelling or use restriction
Covenants against subdivision or business use are stated in the deed.
Acting on a family transfer
Earlier transfers set out reservations that bind later owners.
Reconstructing how a burden arose
Researchers work from the instruments rather than the register entries.
Preparing to answer requisitions
A purchaser's solicitor will raise the terms of every substantive burden, and having the instruments for a Glasnevin property to hand at the outset shortens that exchange considerably rather than leaving it to run over several weeks.
Settling an argument from the document
Where neighbours disagree about what a registered right permits, the instrument is the only authoritative answer, and it is frequently shorter and clearer than either party expects.
Checking what a burden means before committing
Establishing what a registered entry actually requires costs very little compared with discovering it after contracts have been exchanged.
Solicitors
Practitioners in Glasnevin meet strict avenue covenants and institutional boundary arrangements alike, and what each permits is construed from the instrument rather than read off the folio.
Home Buyers
Where a Glasnevin house sits on a planned avenue, the instrument establishes the building line and whether a forward extension or subdivision is prohibited, and the folio entry will not.
Institutions and Their Advisers
Ground adjoining the cemetery, botanic gardens or college is governed by boundary agreements, rights of way and wayleaves set out in deeds rather than on the register.
Management Companies and Their Advisers
Apartment schemes on infill ground carry common areas and service charges created by deed.
Lenders and Their Advisers
Security work turns on what a charge secures and what prior burdens rank ahead of it, and both are questions for the instruments.
Title Researchers and Surveyors
Professional researchers working on Glasnevin property use instrument copies constantly, because the register is an index to the documents rather than a substitute for them. Reconstructing how a burden arose, what was intended by it, and how it interacts with later dealings is work that can only be done from the instruments themselves, and the folio entries are simply the route to finding which documents matter.
Glasnevin lies on the Tolka north of the city, and its instrument record is shaped by the scale of the institutions around which it grew.
The area is defined by large landholdings: a great cemetery, the national botanic gardens, college and religious grounds. Institutions of that kind produce instruments rather than ordinary entries — boundary agreements fixing the line between the institution and its neighbours, rights of way granted and reserved across grounds, and wayleaves for drainage and services. A house backing onto one of these holdings is frequently bound by an agreed boundary and by rights that were negotiated and registered rather than simply assumed.
Between and around the institutions, Glasnevin was built out in planned residential avenues, the best known of them broad and tree-lined. Those avenues were laid out under covenants that controlled the building line so that houses held a consistent set-back, restricted the property to a single dwelling, and governed boundary walls and railings. Where registered, those covenants persist, and they routinely determine whether a forward extension or a subdivision is possible — a question that turns on the deed as much as on planning.
The Tolka is a continuing influence. Ground near the river carries drainage and flood-management wayleaves, with rights of entry and restrictions on building over channels, defined in the instruments that created them.
Infill and former institutional sites have brought apartment schemes, with the ordinary apparatus of common areas and service charges created by deed.
Compulsory first registration reached County Dublin on 1 June 2011, so older Glasnevin property can carry covenants and boundary agreements brought across from earlier unregistered instruments.
For anyone working on a Glasnevin title, the entries worth reading in full are the avenue covenants and any institutional boundary agreement, because in an area built between such large holdings the line and the building restriction are frequently the decisive facts and the folio entry states neither.
Expecting the folio to explain its own burdens
This is the gap the product fills. The folio records that a right of way, covenant or charge exists and gives its instrument number. The terms — width, route, permitted use, maintenance, duration — are in the instrument, and reading the folio entry alone tells you almost nothing about what you are actually bound by.
Ordering without the instrument number
Each entry in Part III refers to its own instrument, and a folio in Glasnevin can carry several. Ordering by folio number alone risks receiving a copy of the wrong document, so the Part III entry is what identifies which one is wanted — /folio-search/dublin/.
Assuming everything affecting the land was lodged
Only registered dealings produce instruments. Informal agreements between neighbours, rights acquired by long occupation and arrangements never reduced to a registered deed generate no document to copy, and their absence from the register is not evidence that they do not bind the land.
Treating a building-line covenant as a planning matter
Whether a forward extension is permitted on a Glasnevin avenue can turn on a registered building-line covenant as much as on planning. The deed sets the line; the folio entry does not disclose it.
Assuming a boundary with an institution follows the fence
Ground beside the cemetery, gardens or college is frequently governed by a registered boundary agreement rather than the visible line. The instrument fixes the boundary and any rights across it; the folio entry records only that they exist.
An Instrument Copy gives you the text of a document lodged and registered against Glasnevin land. It does not establish current ownership, show the registered extent, carry certification under seal, or reach anything that was never lodged — informal arrangements, rights acquired by long occupation, or deeds relating to unregistered land held at the Registry of Deeds. Whether an avenue covenant remains enforceable, the condition of a Tolka channel and planning for infill on institutional ground all fall outside the instrument record.
The most useful thing to send is the folio number with its county and the instrument number from the Part III entry you are interested in. That identifies the exact document without ambiguity.
If you do not have the instrument number, send the address and Eircode, or the folio number and county, and say which burden you are asking about — a right of way, a charge, a covenant. Our team locates the entry, confirms which instrument it refers to and comes back to you before anything is prepared.
If the plot adjoins the cemetery, gardens or college, say so, since a boundary agreement rather than the transfer is frequently the instrument that governs the line.
Delivery time:
The instrument is supplied as an electronic copy, sent to the email address you provide, so nothing waits on the post. Each order is checked against the entry you identified before it is sent.
Where the instrument cannot be located from the details supplied, where the Glasnevin land turns out to be unregistered so that no lodged instrument exists, or where the burden you are asking about arises otherwise than by registered deed, we contact you rather than sending something that does not answer your question.
No. The folio records that the right exists and gives the instrument number. The width, route, permitted use, maintenance obligations and any conditions attaching to it are set out in the instrument that created it, and that document is what has to be read.
As an electronic copy sent to the email address you give us, within. Each order is checked against the Part III entry you identified before it is sent, so you receive the document you actually asked about.
That can turn on a registered building-line covenant as well as on planning. The avenues were laid out with houses held to a consistent set-back, and the transfer sets out the line. The folio entry records that covenants apply without stating them.
Frequently in a registered boundary agreement rather than along the visible fence. Ground beside these institutions was often the subject of a negotiated boundary and rights of entry, set out in an instrument that the folio entry records without describing.
It helps considerably, but it is not essential. If you send the folio number and county and say which burden you are asking about, our team locates the entry and identifies the instrument first — or you can order a folio search to obtain the numbers — /folio-search/dublin/.
Ground near the river can carry a registered drainage or flood wayleave restricting building over channels and reserving entry for maintenance. The instrument defines the corridor and the restrictions; the folio entry shows the right without its extent.
From · Delivered in · Full text of the lodged document
Get Your Instrument Copy for GlasnevinProperty Records Editorial Team
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