Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

As well the Minister of State knows, this Bill provides for the transposition of outstanding elements of Directive 2014/62/EU, a directive on the protection of the euro and other currencies against counterfeiting. The directive calls on member states to introduce criminal offences and sanctions relating to counterfeiting of the euro and other currencies. It introduces common measures in respect of same. The directive also addresses territorial jurisdiction and requires special investigation measures. The importance of protecting against counterfeiting lies in the need to ensure confidence and trust in the authenticity of currency. The deadline for transposing the directive was 23 May 2016. Ireland is the only member state that is yet to transpose the directive. The directive supplements and facilitates the 1929 International Convention for the Suppression of Counterfeiting Currency and its protocol, to which Ireland is a signatory. This requires that signatories to the convention ensure that sufficiently severe criminal penalties exist in respect of counterfeiting offences and sets out rules with regard to co-operation and jurisdictional issues.

I fully agree with the imposition of strict penalties for people who are involved in this kind of criminal activity. It is a serious threat to businesses in my constituency and throughout the country. This is a real threat to the livelihoods of the owners of small and medium-sized businesses. If they receive counterfeit money over the counter and do not realise that it is counterfeit, it will be lodged to the bank where the value of the counterfeit notes is taken out of the lodgement, leaving the businesses high and dry without any comeback. This is another attack on small businesses. To be honest, it would be an attack on any business but is particularly severe for small businesses. Every effort must be made to protect small businesses at this time. We must protect the local publican, the local shopkeeper, the local post office and so on. The opportunists carrying out these crimes have very little sense of the hardship they cause for businesses who suffer losses as a result.

I commend the community alert groups and business watch organisations that have been set up in towns. They are vigilant and immediately send out messages if counterfeit money is handed in over the counter in an area. This gets the word out quickly and lets people know that they have to be more careful. I pay tribute to these business watch and community alert groups because many of those involved are volunteers who are trying to make sure the community and the businesses in a locality are safe.

There are opportunities out there. Young people are trying to come up with good ideas that work.

I spoke yesterday evening about the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition award where the winner, which is a great honour to west Cork and to the excellent Bandon Grammar School, was Gregory Tarr. He is 17 years of age and is a sixth year student and won the top prize for his project in detecting state-of-the-art deepfakes. This is a tremendous achievement for a very young man who has an incredible world ahead of him. Deepfakes are videos or images in which a person's face or body has been digitally altered in order that they appear to be somebody else and are often used to spread false information. In another sense, that is exactly what we are talking about here. I note a 17-year-old could come up with a solution in Bandon. I was lucky enough to meet this young man the year before at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. We were allowed to attend there when there were no restrictions and I knew that this young man had tremendous potential. I see other schools throughout the country and in the little time that people have, the best time way they will ever spend it is inside this BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition awards. I have seen programmes in schools in Bandon including Hamilton High School, as well as others in Clonakilty and Skibbereen and back in to Schull, Bantry and Dunmanway, all of which have entered competitions, where young people come up with ideas to counteract the kind of scams that are going on. Gregory’s project involved detecting state-of-the-art deepfakes.

The funny thing is that when I asked Gregory whether the big social media companies such as Facebook or whatever had been in contact with him about his achievement and the answer was “No”. It is great to have such young people, where we hear so much criticism of them sometimes, and there are some magical young people. There was also a lovely project from other students about birds being covered with oil as a result of leaks where sheep wool was identified as a way of dealing with the problem. Gregory’s project was something akin to what might resolve a great deal of counterfeiting that is going on out there. There were no supports from the social media giants and no snapping up by them of this opportunity or encouraging this young man, who has a great talent, to go further. I am very proud to think that he is a west Cork man.

I hope we will come down strongly on those who are carrying out this counterfeiting of any sort, be it scamming on a card or on a person’s cash when they are passing it over the counter. The only way these people will be beaten is with heavy penalties and, when they are sentenced, that they be given the full sentence and will be made pay for their crime in the prisons of this country.

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