Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I believe Deputy Ó Murchú has experience in the HSE and in IT so this is an area about which he knows something. He asked if the HSE is particularly at risk. It is a very large body. Whole hospital groups are at risk and part of the reason is that, by their nature, there are life-and-death situations going on all the time. There is a pandemic going on, staff are running around and IT security may not be top of their priority list. That is especially true when they are being asked to rapidly develop new systems to cope with the pandemic and bring them online within a couple of weeks. All the staff were working hard to enable the clinical staff to work from home. They were under pressure but the HSE was in a much stronger position this year than it would have been two years ago, for example. Since then, its IT staff and budget have been doubled to €203 million. It is a much more resilient organisation and when this episode is over it will be more resilient still.

As regards the primary legislation, at the moment the NCSC does not have a statutory footing, although the CSIRT does. The NCSC is not defined in law and giving it statutory powers and roles and so on would strengthen it. It would also enable it to co-operate with other national cybersecurity centres across Europe and tell them it is actually legally empowered to do these things. In other words, we can get enhanced co-operation.

I obviously cannot comment on the ongoing Garda investigation, what the source of the problem was or how the Garda is getting on in pursuing the criminals. Was there anything else the Deputy wanted to ask me?