Fraud is a crime which can affect anybody but which particularly targets vulnerable people and businesses who may not be aware of or vigilant to the risks of online and telephone fraud in particular.
The proposed shared fraud information database for the banking sector is an initiative brought forward by the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland, who have engaged with my Department and with the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner on the matter.
The purpose of the proposed database, which is to be run by a specialist provider on behalf of participating banks, is to help identify and prevent fraud against those banks and their customers through the systemised sharing of relevant information across the participating organisations. The system will operate according to a strict set of data matching rules to identify patterns of suspicious activity, with returned matches to be investigated on a case by case basis.
Access to the proposed database will be solely for the purposes of fraud investigation and prevention and will be limited to specially trained teams within participating banks.
I am advised that the establishment of the database will necessitate enabling Regulations under the Data Protection Act 2018. I support this and work has commenced in my Department with a view to finalising the necessary Regulations later this year, subject to the outcome of further stakeholder consultations that are necessary to inform the detailed content of the Regulations.
More broadly, the Deputy will be aware that an all-of-Government implementation plan to progress the recommendations in the Hamilton Review into Economic Crime was published in 2022, setting out 22 actions to enhance enforcement and prevention capacity in this area.
To date, a number of actions have been completed and a number of others have been significantly advanced:
• 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 in May 2022, chaired by a former Director of Public Prosecutions – the Advisory Council is currently developing a multi-annual strategy to combat economic crime and corruption.
• 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 2022.
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.
Furthermore, progress has also been made on reform of the Ethics Acts and additional resourcing for enforcement agencies.
