Ms Derville Rowland:

We do not have responsibility as the overarching regulator, but we intend to seek to deploy a connected strategy. We already work very closely with the Garda and have a mandate for unauthorised financial promotions, namely, people who are not regulated in Ireland to sell financial services and fraudsters who are putting up advertisements. Some of that used to be in newspapers or other old-fashioned methods, but there are now more modern methods. We have powers to take those down and require the co-operation of Internet service providers. They are often located in jurisdictions very far away from this island. That is the best we can do.

We often get more traction if gardaí are involved. We work very well with them. They are very involved, and have developed approaches on the typologies of crime for money-laundering and will work with a public private partnerships approach and anonymised data. We see that as a model that can be used into the future. I am optimistic that there are ways to penetrate this in a practical and effective way with the new Digital Services Act by engaging and aligning with the oversight regulator and how it requires Internet service providers to take action in terms of their obligations under this Act, processes and procedures and risk assessment. As I said, we want to become one of the preferred and trusted counterparts in this so that if we see an issue, we can notify the authorities directly. Given that we will be a trusted partner in this, that partner will act, subject to fair procedures, on our request. That would be far more effective.

We have an idea, on which we need to engage with dialogue with the regulator. We propose that in the case of any entity stating it is regulated or authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland which seeks to use a paid Internet service provider, the provider would not take that business unless it checked with us to see if that in fact was true. That will be an attempt to stop promotions getting into the Internet and reduce the harm customers are exposed to in the first place.

The second part of that is our work in Europe because it is a connected payments system, and we have to be cognisant that in Europe we have to work with the PSD 3 payment services directive to strengthen customer authentication and IBAN checks. It is another help. It is in some jurisdictions. It needs to come in here. I think that is on a timeline. That is another safeguard for people, that the name they are sending the money to matches the name they think it is. They will get warned. It is a multidisciplinary way of thinking about this, and there is a number of ways to try to reduce it. Something we are strong on right now is trying to do consumer campaigns. Some of our staff have been on afternoon TV. We notice we have received high recognition for that kind of work. It is important that consumers are also equipped to protect themselves as well as the system working at a number of different points. I hope that is helpful.