Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 31 May 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Discussion (Resumed)

Mr. Justin Kelly:

I will comment briefly and then pass over to Mr. Cryan. The banking people have made significant strides in recent years. We all know about two-factor authentication and the various safeguards. The big problem is that the human factor is the weak point. Most of these attacks do not come from complicated hacks, spam or computer viruses. Rather, they come from human weaknesses, where people have fallen for the various methods of which I am sure the committee is aware. For us, it is about trying to educate as much as we can. As I stated, we made significant attempts in that regard. We have always said that if something seems to good to be true, it probably is not true. On the investment side in particular, there are tragic cases where people made significant investments in things that are non-existent, especially in the area of crypto. People are looking at crypto as a get-rich-quick scheme.