Ken O'Flynn (Cork North-Central, Independent Ireland Party)

I hope the Tánaiste will join with me in welcoming Don José González Carballo and his wife, Justa García Toro, on their visit to Leinster House. Don José is a professor of history who is studying in Ireland at the moment.

On 3 July, ComReg activated the SMS sender ID protection register, which is a great idea. It is meant to stop the scam texts we are all receiving. More than 360,000 of them have been received to date by people who have reported it. As we know, €100 million has been lost due to scam texts. Having said that, unfortunately, the system does not appear to be working correctly. The algorithm is not working correctly and computer engineers and the engineering team have not rectified it yet. Many people are losing appointments and legitimate communications from bodies such as the HSE. CAO offers and bank alerts have been mistakenly flagged as likely scams. While I want to bring this to the Tánaiste's attention, the company does not believe that it has found the source of it. What happens in autumn is that those that are flagged as scam texts are no longer on the text system, so the likes of the HSE and Bank of Ireland have not been. I have received two of these texts, one for my hotel reservation this week, which came up as a likely scam, and another, which was a scam but was not flagged. I am asking that we communicate with ComReg that it should not roll this out further until all the technology is correct.

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