The Garda force is “stretched” and faces a “loss of ambition” among senior officers at a time when “political extremism” is a major challenge and online fraud has reached “industrial” levels, Garda Commissioner Drew Harris has warned.
In documents obtained by The Irish Times under a Freedom of Information request, Mr Harris said the Republic now faced “an increasingly complex and difficult policing and national security environment”.
Many of the challenges were “driven by issues way beyond the control or influence” of the Garda or the State, including Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the “vicious war in Gaza”. Other security challenges were the “mass movement of displaced people” through conflict and “industrial-scale online fraud and corruption of normal business activities”.
On Thursday night, the Garda said it had been contacted by numerous banks and financial institutions “who are experiencing very high levels of smishing (text message) fraud” in the run-up to Christmas.
In the latest scam described by gardaí as “very convincing”, fraudsters are issuing phone numbers for customers to ring in order to resolve an alleged issue with the customer’s account.
“When an agent answers the phone, they scam customers into divulging their banking and security credentials.”
Gardaí from the Garda National Economic Crime Bureau (GNECB) advised bank customers to be extra vigilant. While the fraudulent text messages “can often appear within a previous, genuine thread”, the phone numbers provided are not genuine, gardaí said.
Customers who responded to a text message that they believe is fraudulent are advised to contact their bank as soon as possible.
Mr Harris’s concerns about the proliferation of criminal activity online have been echoed by banks and communications watchdog ComReg, which has described the scale of cybercrime here as a “blight” costing as much as €300 million every year.
The organisation’s research suggests that more than 90 per cent of adults here have received a scam call to their mobile phone, while 84 per cent have received some form of scam text.
Up to 80 per cent of consumers do at least some of their Christmas shopping online and during the peak period there is an increased risk to shoppers, with fraudsters taking advantage of the Christmas rush, warned the Banking and Payments Federation of Ireland’s head of financial crime, Niamh Davenport.
Scammers often use contaminated links hidden within emails, social media and online adverts that lead unsuspecting shoppers to counterfeit websites.
Ms Davenport said that as Christmas approaches, Irish banks have been “seeing an increase in customers affected by online scams, proportionate to the surge in online shopping at this time of year”.
She said banks had also noted “a rise in parcel delivery text message scams, which reflects the increase in online shopping activity. We strongly encourage customers who are waiting for deliveries to be on alert”.
She said that if anyone received a text asking for personal or financial information, whether it was purporting to be from a parcel delivery service or any other company, they should not click on the link, “especially if there is a sense of urgency to it. Pause for thought and if in any doubt contact the company independently.”
Mr Harris’s concerns about the scale of online crime in Ireland were contained in a list of issues that the Garda is having to deal with that was sent to a Government-appointed review group earlier this year.
Other major concerns of the gardaí were “the rise in synthetic drugs with lethal consequences for users” and “the continued efforts of organised crime groups to corrupt our society through drug dealing”.
The review group was examining whether taxes applied to large pensions – the standard fund threshold (SFT) – for public and civil servants should be reformed amid concern the penalty was affecting the retention of senior gardaí. The commissioner warned the taxes being applied to Garda pensions were so large there was a real risk a “significant cohort” of chief superintendents and assistant commissioners would retire early.
“Against these actual threats,” he said of the policing and security challenges he set out, “An Garda Siochana is stretched and the loss of experience through retirement and the loss of ambition through disillusionment are real threats to the effectiveness of An Garda Síochána. I have very significant concerns where, in effect, senior members of An Garda Síochána are checking out of both further advancement and continued policing service.”
Earlier this week The Irish Times reported the Department of Justice made a submission to the SFT review group warning that failure to make changes could prompt an exodus of senior gardaí and judges.
The SFT – the size of pension pot where very large tax liabilities kick in – was raised to €2.8 million, from €2 million, on foot of the review earlier this year.
However, senior Garda officers told The Irish Times, because their pensions were fast accruing late in their policing careers, they would still face very large tax liabilities on retirement. They believe when an vacancy at assistant commissioner level is advertised in the weeks ahead, few current Garda members will apply.
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