Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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244. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the number of reported cases made to An Garda Síochána with respect to financial fraud; the number of cases investigated with respect to same; the number of cases closed with conviction with respect to same; the value of money recovered with respect to same in each of the years 2016 to 2022; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [26800/23]

Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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245. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the number of reported cases made to An Garda Síochána with respect to authorised push payment fraud; the number of cases investigated with respect to same; the number of cases closed with conviction with respect to same; the value of money recovered with respect to same in each of the years 2016 to 2022; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [26801/23]

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 244 and 245 together.

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 is not tolerated.

Combatting and preventing various types of fraudulent crime falls under the remit of several Departments and agencies. I can assure the Deputy that these crimes are not taken lightly by this Government, or by Gardaí, who are committed to tackling this form of crime, which particularly targets vulnerable people and businesses.

As the Deputy will be aware, by law the investigation of crime is an operational matter for An Garda Síochána. As Minister for Justice, I have no role in these matters.

I can however assure the Deputy that the Government is committed to ensuring An Garda Síochána has the resources it needs to deliver a modern, fit-for-purpose, policing service. The 2023 budget for An Garda Síochána provides funding of over €2 billion. This level of funding will support the planned recruitment of up to 1,000 new Garda members and 400 new Garda staff this year.

I am informed that there has been a 21% increase in resourcing provided to Garda National Economic Crime Bureau (GNECB) since the end of 2020, up from 95 to a total of 115 at the end of April 2023. I am also informed that GNECB is also providing training and support to all Garda Divisions in how to investigate fraud.

To be of assistance to the Deputy, I sought the requested information from An Garda Síochána and I am informed that the count of reported incidents annually for each of the requested incident types listed on PULSE under the Fraud/Economic crime category is as follows:

The data is provided from 2019 onwards, as most of these fraud/economic crime incident types were introduced in PULSE during late 2018. Zero values are indicated with a (-) and counts less than 10 are indicated with an (*).

Information in relation to the number of convictions under these incident types is not readily available and would require a disproportionate amount of Garda time and resources to compile.