Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It was the Department of Justice that gave me the figures. As Mr. Palmer said, the figures show a reduction in 2022 but an explosion in 2021, which was related to Covid, with more people at home doing online shopping, who were easier targets for fraud. One thing is very clear. If we look over a longer horizon, this is a losing battle. It is going up and up. We have had people from the BPFI at the committee saying that the problem is that, as other jurisdictions close down, including Britain, and have stricter regulations and so on, we can become an easy target.

I would like to move on to the issue of the third part of the regulation from the European Commission, which is the compensation mechanism. Mr. Palmer may elaborate on this but of the three measures, he was probably more cautious in regard to that measure. Has he reservations or issues in regard to the compensation measure? All types of fraud are wrong. Obviously, the banks are losing money through unauthorised push payments but with unauthorised push payments, the victims in the main are compensated. With authorised push payments, they are not. We have people losing tens of thousands of euro in investment frauds. We have people losing thousands of euro, if not tens of thousands, in romance scams. We have others losing thousands of euro in accommodation scams. There is no recourse for them. People could lose their shirt, lose their savings, on an account takeover but there is no compensation measure. If a person lives in Newry, Derry or Strabane, there is, but here, there is not.

That is why I particularly ask the committee to focus on this area and to push ahead with proposals that would secure, from a victim point of view and a consumer point of view, greater protections, but also force the banks to put in place the procedures that would help the banks to identify these types of fraud, like confirmation of the payee, which is so basic. This will result in the bank having to confirm that the person you are sending money to - the IBAN number - is really Joe Bloggs and not some other person who is scamming you. I do not understand why we have taken so long to introduce this. As I said, the regulation will now introduce this.

On compensation, will Mr. Palmer explain the Department's early view of the compensation proposals from the European Commission? They will compensate in two areas, or that is my understanding. They will compensate where the confirmation of payee was not carried out properly by the bank. If you make the payment and the bank told you that the IBAN matched the person's name, and it did not, then you are entitled to compensation. It will also compensate you where there is spoofing involved, where a person pretends to be from the bank and you make a payment. As a result, you are entitled to a 100% refund in that case, as long as you meet certain conditions. Has the Department concerns in regard to those measures?