Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

In that case, I will be brief.

This is a point I might reiterate if I can come back in on later sections. Earlier, I attended a meeting of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Donohoe. I made a point to him that also applies here, which is that the areas for which the Minister is responsible are of huge significance for the economic development of the State, as well as for social and other progress in areas such as the digital economy and the clean energy economy. Moreover, that is even before one considers rivers, engineering, geoscience and so on. If my recollection is correct regarding the core analytical staff available to the Minister to understand and manage the new digital economy and the clean economy, according to the Sunday newspapers, Ireland probably has more civil servants working out sick pay for those public servants who are sick than it has working in the area of digital and energy policy. I have made the point to the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, that this requires a quantum change. As I understand it, 5,000 civil servants in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine process payment forms for Europe or whatever. Why not get 2,000 of them and start them working on this issue? I have nothing against agriculture but I have a general sense about ambition for this area.

There must be 30,000 people in my constituency of Dublin Bay South who work in the digital industries and we are interested in what the Vice President for the Commission was talking about before this committee regarding privacy issues, copyright issues, spectrum management. Any one of the issues presented to members by the Vice President would require a team of ten civil servants to understand how Ireland should position itself. I refer to the copyright issue or, for example, the not insignificant issue of the Max Schrems judgment in the Facebook case. This is not of no consequence to our economic, social and other future as Ireland must be the best at understanding the ethical rules on the digital economy. I make the point that while I agree issues such as the national broadband scheme and so on undoubtedly are important, it actually is about the soft stuff, that is, the intellectual understanding of what is happening in the digital economy. I do not believe the Department has the requisite number of staff and while there is nothing wrong with the staff, the Department needs more resources. My sense is it requires a fivefold increase and I could make the same point in respect of clean energy. I am interested to learn how or whether the Minister thinks he might get such an increase.

As a final brief question, who should I contact if I want to know about cyber-security in the Irish State? If that is a security issue in its own right, the Minister can tell me privately. However, as one example, can he outline to me the number of people the State has working in the area of cyber-security and where are they based? What sort of secure interaction can the joint committee have on the issue of cyber-security?