The long-awaited property price register in Ireland, detailing the sale price of residential properties, will miss its expected summer deadline according to a report in the Irish Times.

Despite being eagerly anticipated by estate agents, homeowners and buyers, and a recent call from the head of government run NAMA (National Asset Management Agency) to develop a commercial equivalent, the property price register has yet to materialise.

However, according to Tom Lynch, chief executive of the Property Services Regulatory Authority (PSRA), the register was never going to be ready for June, a date misinterpreted by the press and it will in fact be up and running by the end of September.

The PSRA is currently working on licensing all estate agents, and the database is the authority’s next priority. According to Lynch, it will provide details on all properties sold from January 2010.

At the moment estate agents are precluded from divulging sale prices unless they have the express permission of both parties to the sale, which means that the information available has come mainly from auction sales - many of which are for distressed properties which are sold for cash. For this reason, the current data released by the Central Statistics Office is not seen as wholly representative of the market.