Last week I brought up the issue of fraud through text messages and emails, how one third of people affected by this type of fraud do not report it and the fact that 57% of people who did report it were getting their funds back. Since I raised it last week, I have been inundated with correspondence from people all over the country. A number of people who have been affected by this who never felt the ability to report it or talk about it have contacted me and told me their stories.

We need to have a debate in this House, probably with the Minister for Finance, about the onus on the banks and other institutions to follow this up. One person sent me a message to say they had received correspondence and texts from an official bank number, which told them an unauthorised device had accessed their account and gave them instructions. What had happened was that the scammer had infiltrated the bank's security system. The person immediately followed all the instructions they were given, transferred money from one account to another account and someone was at a bank machine at the other end of that account, probably standing in front of a camera where they could be seen, withdrawing this money. Now, this individual has no follow up because the money was immediately taken out and the bank could not freeze it. The same individual told me the bank froze the account and subsequently additional money was taken out of the account. The banks are not doing enough to follow up on this and if they are not, maybe we are not doing enough to legislate for this. Therefore, we need to have a conversation about this to protect individuals. Based on the correspondence I have received about this in recent days, there is a multiplier of the information and the people we know have been affected by this so I would love for that conversation to happen.