Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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133. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment if there are any plans to introduce legislation to facilitate an SMS scam filter to better protect consumers from mass fraudulent text messages; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43016/24]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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My Department is committed to tackling scam calls and texts across electronic communications networks and services.

Both my Department and the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg), the statutorily independent regulator under the aegis of my Department, continue to explore and evaluate interventions to protect consumers from nuisance communications. This includes an ongoing evaluation of potential legislative solutions that would enable a broader application of SMS Filtering than currently available.

Meanwhile, ComReg established an industry action group to address the growing menace of scam calls and texts, the Nuisance Communication Industry Forum (NCIF). This cross-industry body builds on the work of the previous Nuisance Communications Industry Taskforce (NCIT), established in February 2022.

In April of this year, informed by the submissions to its consultation in June 2023 and by the work of the NCIT, ComReg mandated six interventions. The interventions focus on restoring trust in Ireland’s telecommunications services by identifying and deploying interventions to decrease the prevalence and damaging effects of nuisance communications. These include:

- Do Not Originate (DNO) list: a list of numbers that will be blocked for call origination.

- Protected Numbers (PN): The blocking of numbers that have not been assigned by ComReg.

- Fixed – Calling Line Identification (CLI) Call Blocking: Identifies and blocks scam calls originating from international networks, but present as an Irish landline caller.

- Mobile CLI Call Blocking: Identifies and blocks scam calls originating from international networks presenting as an Irish mobile caller.

- SMS Sender ID Registry: Allows businesses to register their Sender ID. Operators would then block any SMS message bearing a Sender ID from an unregistered source.

- Voice-firewall: which is software that identifies and blocks scam calls from Ireland or abroad and will help protect against future more sophisticated scams.

The NCIF will assist and oversee the implementation of ComReg’s recently published Decision Instruments, mandating this package of interventions.

These interventions are at various stages of deployment and so the impact of these efforts will likely be enjoyed and recognised by the Irish consumer in a phased manner. Operators have already implemented a number of these measures to tackle nuisance communications, which have blocked around 30 million scam calls since 2023.

ComReg intends to publish separate a consultation before the end of the year to identify any further interventions to combat scam SMS.