Mr. Ben Ryan:

I thank the committee for the opportunity to present to it. I am the head of criminal justice policy function within the Department of Justice. I am speaking on behalf of the Department and the Secretary General, who is unfortunately unable to attend. I am accompanied by my colleague, Ms Kate Oliver, from the economic, transnational and organised crime unit in my function.

At this stage, I will explain that while the Department of Justice engages with An Garda Síochána and other stakeholders on tackling fraud generally, the Department of Finance maintains the policy lead on the banking sector, which includes many of the measures relevant to tackling authorised push payment, APP, fraud. It also involves other Departments and their agencies. I will, of course, do my best to address any queries raised today and can follow up with colleagues in the Department of Finance or in other Departments and agencies for any questions I cannot answer.

Figures provided by the BPFI show that in 2021, 3,967 transactions were affected by authorised payment fraud, accounting for a gross loss of €16.8 million. This was up from 1,646 transactions in 2019, which accounted for a gross loss of €10.3 million. However, looking at the figures for 2022, the provisional crime statistics released by An Garda Síochána in March show that technology-based fraud, such as phishing, account takeover, and online shopping fraud, went down in 2022, following the significant increase during the Covid-19 pandemic.

On a domestic level, banks undertake a range of actions to tackle fraud. These include: payment-screening measures; running systems to detect unusual payment patterns; customer engagement to ensure any suspected fraud is reported immediately; and educational campaigns to ensure customers are aware of the risks of this type of fraud and how to avoid it. As members are aware, the report from the retail banking review was published last November. The Department of Finance is working on a number of recommendations arising out of this. This includes engaging with the financial literacy stream of the adult literacy for life strategy so that Ireland is compliant with the OECD High-Level Principles on Financial Consumer Protection and the recommendation on financial literacy. The Commission for Communications Regulation, ComReg, a body under the aegis of the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, is actively working with the telecoms industry through the nuisance communications industry task force to mitigate scam texts and calls and restore trust in the telecommunications industry. The task force has published a number of information documents to help businesses combat scam communications.

The revised payment services directive, PSD2, was transposed into Irish law with effect from 13 January 2018 by the European Union (Payment Services) Regulations 2018. The main objectives of PSD2 include enhancing consumer protection and improving payment security across Europe. The European Commission is currently reviewing the directive. It is expected that this will include fraud, which encompasses APP fraud. This review is expected to be published in late June. Officials from the Department of Finance have been engaging with the Commission’s review on areas of Irish interest, including payment fraud.

As regards specific resources, the criminal justice policy aspects of fraud are the responsibility of the economic, transnational and organised crime policy team under my remit. Our colleagues in our criminal legislation function look after any relevant primary and secondary legislation required. This is in addition to the staff working on these issues in the Department of Finance. The GNECB is responsible for the investigation of all types of fraud cases. It should be noted that the Garda Commissioner is obviously responsible for the allocation of resources within An Garda Síochána. However, I am informed a 21% increase in resourcing has been provided to the GNECB since the end of 2020. This translates to an increase from 95 staff to a total of 115 staff at the end of March 2023. Assistant Commissioner Kelly has given some initial detail on resources within the GNECB and can provide more, if required, but I take the opportunity to emphasise that this is an issue the Government takes extremely seriously.

I am happy to address any specific questions I can that the committee may have, or go into further details on anything I mentioned.