Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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470. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality if her Department will undertake a comprehensive review of economic crime, financial fraud and scamming given the increased prevalence of economic crime arising online and through digital technology, and its growing threat to consumers; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [47355/22]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy may be aware that an all-of-Government implementation plan to progress the recommendations in the Hamilton Review into Economic Crime was published last year. This sets out 22 actions to enhance enforcement and prevention capacity in this area.

Five actions have already been completed in full, and a number of others have been significantly advanced. For example:

- the Criminal Procedure Bill has been enacted,

- the Judicial Council has been engaged with in relation to the development of judicial training on complex economic crime/corruption cases,

- the Advisory Council against Economic Crime and Corruption was established this summer, chaired by a former Director of Public Prosecutions;

- a Forum of senior representatives from the relevant operational bodies was established in June 2021, and

- the Competition Amendment Act was signed into law on 29 June of this year.

There has also been significant progress to implement other recommendations of the Review, such as greater powers for investigating agencies to tackle economic crime and corruption. There is ongoing work to amend relevant legislation around search warrants. This will allow Gardaí to require subjects of arrest warrants to provide the passwords to their electronic devices. Progress has also been made on reform of the Ethics Acts and additional resourcing for enforcement agencies.

An Garda Síochána cooperates with INTERPOL and other partner law enforcement agencies to tackle this criminality. Recently Gardaí, in conjunction with INTERPOL and Law Enforcement Agencies across 13 countries on 4 Continents, carried out enforcement activity under Operation JACKAL.

Operation JACKAL, which is called Operation SKEIN in Ireland, is an investigation into an International Criminal Organisation which commit mainly Business Email Compromise and Romance Frauds worldwide and launder the proceeds through networks of bank accounts in countries including Ireland.

Garda National Economic Crime Bureau (GNECB) personnel have attended and presented at co-ordination meetings with Interpol and led out a week of action in September 2022. This week of action resulted in seventy-five (75) arrests worldwide (34 of these were in Ireland), fifty eight (58) searches being conducted (9 were in Ireland) and €1.2 million frozen in bank accounts worldwide. Further periods of action are planned in 2023.

Every person in Ireland deserves to feel safe and to be safe when they conduct their personal business online or over the phone, and so the practice of trying to trick people out of their personal information or hard-earned money will not be tolerated.

I urge anyone conducting sensitive or personal business online or over the phone to be very cautious when providing personal or banking information. Many of the financial institutions have excellent advice for customers on how to be safe online, as does the Citizens’ Information website.

Combatting and preventing fraud and related cybercrime falls under the remit of several Departments and agencies. I can assure the Deputy that there is close cooperation across the whole of Government on this issue.

The Deputy may be aware that October was European Cyber Security Month. This initiative aims to raise awareness of cybersecurity threats and to promote cybersecurity awareness and prevention, as this is by far the most effective way to combat this crime, which often preys on the vulnerable.

The focus of this year's campaign was on informing the public, in particular the elderly, on how to avoid becoming a victim of email phishing, how to spot the tell-tale signs of these types of emails and what to do if a person has fallen victim to an e-mail phishing attack.

Phishing emails, used by attackers to lure people into disclosing personal details or clicking on malicious links, are used by cyber-criminals to gain unauthorised access to a computer or network. Hackers continue to design smarter and more sophisticated phishing emails, in the hope of gaining people’s trust and pressuring them into acting without thinking. 

I can assure the Deputy that these crimes are not taken lightly by this Government, or by Gardaí, and I reiterate our commitment to tackling this form of crime, which particularly targets the vulnerable.

If anyone suspects that they have been the victim of a cyber crime or fraud, I would encourage them to contact Gardaí to report this at the earliest possible time. I assure people that members of An Garda Síochána will be best placed to advise them.