Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am only raising it so that somebody will perhaps stick in a note, or perhaps somebody from AIB or Permanent TSB is watching.

It was interesting that AIB also went into great detail about the social media platforms. In Britain, compensation must be paid by some of the social media platforms. AIB confirmed to us that it runs anti-fraud campaigns on social media websites. It also stated these same online platforms receive income from criminals for paid advertisements and for hosting fraudulent websites. It is maddening that banks are paying for ads on social media trying to alert people of scams, the scammers are paying for ads on the same social media platforms and the social media platforms are getting paid twice.

We asked the banks to indicate how they take down some of these websites or how they alert the public to fraudulent ads. AIB stated:

... establishing direct contact with social media companies has proved to be difficult as social media companies do not engage at industry level or publish their fraud team members contact details. They utilise general e-mail boxes. The 'report ad' function [which any of us can see on Facebook and so on] that is in place for individuals is the same process that is utilised by organisations, including AIB and other financial institutions.

If we see an ad that is a wee bit dodgy, there is a "Report Ad" function. The board of AIB has no other direct contact than this same function. If AIB sees ads on any online platform - I am not saying specifically Facebook, Amazon or Google but it could be any of those - it has no way of making direct contact with any of those online platforms. AIB also stated:

When the Bank proactively reports cases, it is normal to receive a standard acknowledgement "the report does not breach community standards". No feedback is ever received from the companies on the background to or progress on their investigations, if any.

Mr. Palmer is not in charge of Google, Amazon, Facebook and all the rest but he is the policy lead on this issue. We cannot have a situation in which many of these companies are headquartered just down the road yet our financial institutions have no way of contacting them and saying the fraudulent websites targeting citizens across this State need to be taken down. If we have to legislate for it or do something about it, we have to do that. Other Departments have direct contact with these companies. There needs to be a pathway for financial institutions to instruct or alert social media organisations and platforms that there is fraudulent activity or that they are running paid advertisements that are fraudulent in the first place. I am not holding Mr. Palmer to account over that but asking him to try to deal with it. It is ridiculous in this day and age.