Mr. Colm Kincaid:

If I recall correctly from the Commission’s report, it flags this as an area that it will keep an eye on. It said towards the end of the section about its reforms that there could be cases where the companies the Deputy is referring to may be liable as well. The view we have is the one I expressed in the opening statement, which is that we think the whole discussion around liability, especially when we talk about liability as an incentive to change behaviour, needs to involve all of the commercial actors involved, which includes the companies we have been referring to as well as banking and payments firms. That is our policy view.

This is a good time to be having the discussion. We have the Commission proposals. We can now see the shape of the European framework on authorised push-payment fraud and liability specifically, something for which I know the Deputy has advocated strongly. Now is the right time for Ireland to consider our policy view of that. Do we believe the European Commission proposals go far enough? Should they go further? Should we advocate for that at a European level? Should we look at domestic measures etc.? Our policy view is that now is the time to be having that conversation, not just looking at the payment firms at the centre of the payments transactions, but actually looking at all the commercial actors involved, recognising, as I said, the very powerful statistic that 80% of authorised push-payment fraud started its life as an online ad.