Results 4,261-4,280 of 35,549 for speaker:Pearse Doherty

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: I thank the witnesses for coming before the committee and I thank the committee for agreeing to our proposal to host this module. There are very few people in the State who have not been victims of fraudsters or whom fraudsters have attempted to make victims of. We are all inundated with these text messages, whether these purport to come from eFlow or An Post. These days, we do not really...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: Regarding authorised push payments for the year for which we have data, that is 2021-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: For the entire year, we are talking about close to €17 million. Is that correct?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: This was an increase of 35% in that year. Even though we do not have data for 2022 or the first part of 2023, we can all reasonably expect this level has gone up significantly.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: Yes.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: Yes. Work was done on this by the banks. I am sure many of us here and those watching would have got calls from the bank to say there had been an attempt made to buy an 85-inch television or a trip to the Bahamas, and the response would have been that this was nothing to do with us and those payments have been stopped. For unauthorised payments, a rule of thumb is that they are all...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: Okay. What we are looking at here is the issue of customers being defrauded and ending up substantially out of pocket. Regarding authorised push payments, which is what we are discussing, the value of these types of payment is significantly higher than the most common types of unauthorised push payments. Is that correct?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: We could be talking about someone being out by €4,000 as compared to someone being out by perhaps €90 in a credit card scam.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: Yes, it is a lot lower. I was looking at the report from the BPFI which stated the average card payment fraud was only €90.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: I am sorry. That is across all cards.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: That is why the levels of scamming are much higher. Given the trend in this regard, is it fair to say we are losing the fight against the scammers? They are steps ahead of us. There has been a 35% increase in authorised push payments and there are significant levels of unauthorised push payments. The number of people defrauded and the value of the amount of money pocketed by the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: I agree 100%. To go into that with my next line of questioning, we see that the trends are increasing. More people are being scammed and the value of the scams is increasing. When we get the 2020 and 2023 results, it is likely to have gone in the same direction. In the meantime, we do not have a national strategy for combating economic crime. It is just batshit crazy that 4,000 people...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: There are two ends to this. First, we want a strategy where we are all pointing in the same direction. This is online fraud. As I said, 4,000 people lost €17 million. Some 4,000 people were, on average, robbed of more than €4,000 each that year. The same probably happened last year and it is likely to be more this year, yet we do not have a national strategy. The second...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: In the absence of that, BPFI is chairing a kind of intelligence group that includes the Garda, the banks and other agencies to share fraud trends and typologies. Is that correct? However, they obviously cannot share the core information because their hands are restrained in respect of that.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: Regarding the group the BPFI set up, I commend its work on that but I note the restrictions. It is looking after the fact. The horse has well bolted down the fields and the customers and banks have been left short-changed as a result of this. If we had the shared information fraud database and our national strategy, is it still the banking industry that should be chairing that type of...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: In respect of the banking industry's awareness campaign, is paid advertisement being taken out on social media platforms to get that message across?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: How do the witnesses feel about the social media companies being in a win-win situation? They are taking money from the fraudsters in terms of paid advertisement to scam us and then they are taking money from the industry to try to prevent the scammers. Do social media companies and telecommunication companies that are accepting paid advertisement on their platforms have a responsibility to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: Let me go back to the victim in this, and the 4,000 people scammed in 2021. They did not get any compensation. They were out of pocket and that was it. They are changing the laws in Britain. The voluntary code between the ten large banks was mentioned and that is now moving to a statutory code. The consultation is finished. A policy statement has been issued by the British Government,...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Authorised Push Payments Fraud: Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (24 May 2023)

Pearse Doherty: Of course you have to but-----