Little update from me. AIB sent a badly worded letter that stated that I had cancelled my direct debit and that the onus was now on me to ensure any payments be made by standing order. I suspected this DD cancellation was automatically triggered by the mortgage being cleared with my last DD at the end of January. I called them this morning to be absolutely sure there is no outstanding balance and they confirmed the above and that the balance is in fact zero.
The nice lady then asked me what I wanted to do with the deeds. I was given two options:
1) Send them to a solicitor.
2) Send them to a nominated AIB branch for collection in person by me only.
My old solicitor in Ireland has retired and I don't fancy paying a new one to handle this for me so I asked could I nominate a relative to collect in branch but this was refused. As I live abroad I will need to return home for a couple of days to take care of it personally but ok. It doesn't happen that often and I can see the family anyway. She also told me it is currently taking approximately 8 to 10 weeks for the deeds to make their way from the archive (not sure if this is specific to mortgages that have moved from UB as mine did or if it applies generally to AIB mortgages) to the nominated branch and that I should receive a phone call from the branch when they are ready for collection. I'll book some cheap flights once I get that call.
I guess I need to then have the bank removed as a charge on the deeds but one thing at a time.
Also do you need a solicitor involved when fully settling the mortgage loan.