Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I was struck by the figure of 80% originating online. My very limited experience of this is seeing stuff in my emails that immediately looks like a scam, something pretending to be from the Bank of Ireland or some other institution offering an attractive investment. I do not even open those types of emails. The witnesses also made reference to advertisements for holidays. Is that the sort of thing we are seeing? People think it is a great deal, push a payment for it and then discover the money is gone to a scammer.

Could the social media and IT companies be stopping a lot of that stuff even getting onto their platforms? If a company is advertising then presumably it has to pay to advertise a holiday in Bermuda that is a fake holiday in Bermuda. It has to pay the social media company to get that on. Surely there has to be some sort of vetting, for want of a better word. Surely the social media companies have to gather information on their customers who are advertising with them and check that it is a legitimate advertisement. Should or could they be doing more? Are they being helpful?