Ms Niamh Davenport:

We spoke about this in preparing for this meeting. Taking as an example unauthorised payments, such as text message scams, these would all be refunded through the chargeback scheme. We have full refunds in most of those cases. They are still investigated. We take this approach rather than just doing a mandatory refund because we do get false claims and first-party fraud as well. Every case, whether unauthorised or authorised, is investigated on a case-by-case basis.

When it comes to the authorised push payments fraud, every case is also investigated. We know there is a similar scheme in the UK. Even though it is a redress scheme - it is called the reimbursement code - only about 66% of those cases get refunded in the UK. We are at similar levels here without having that redress scheme and, as I said, we are already refunding in the cases of unauthorised payments.

We are not against bringing in any protections for the consumer. These are very important to us. We must also be careful, however, that we do not introduce a culture of fraud and become a destination for fraudsters. The UK has many more attempts at fraud and many more of them are successful. As I said, for half a year, our figure was €7.6 million. For authorised push payments fraud in the UK, the equivalent figure was £538 million. We are, therefore, in a significantly different place. This is partly because the UK is a destination for fraudsters because it is known to be refunding.

Additionally, the UK also put many other preventative measures in place before bringing out its code. It is important to remember that the UK had shared fraud databases and other prevention measures in place as well as the ability to share information on the preventative side before implementing the refunds. It is important not to take must one aspect of the legislation in the UK. The House of Lords also recommended several months ago to examine the telecommunications and Internet companies as well because that is where the advertisements are being placed. There are several things we would have to do in conjunction with any change before bringing out the code here.