Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State mentioned the need for awareness raising and bringing people's attention to these issues, and that is important. I accept it is complex and involves a number of agencies. I would add there is a possibility this could continue, increase and get worse. It is a frustration and a nuisance outside of anything else. I would encourage those agencies to work together to try to address it, stop it, reduce it, and minimise it as best they can because it will be a growing problem if it continues and people are getting one or two nuisance phone calls daily out of a handful of phone call per days. The effort of calling back those missed numbers would be frustrating for people and it does not need to be a sign of things to come. I encourage those agencies to come together, include the phone operators and seek to minimise this activity. They should tackle it and reduce it to as close to zero as is possible. Otherwise, it will be increasingly frustrating for people.

I would also ask the Minister of State to come back to me on the assessment of the level of this activity. How often is it happening? Is it on the increase? Does it look like it will be on the increase? What protections are there for people who have been adversely affected by it in terms of losing money?

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