Mr. Mark Griffin:

They were actually working on the capacity review. The cyberattack was in May. They had started work on the capacity review pre-Christmas 2020, that is, at the end of 2020. Having regard to what they see internationally, they would have said this is a core group of staff who are highly skilled and hard-working, with a deep knowledge of the sectors in which they operate, but that there is a need to scale up. What we have seen since then is the Government response in July of this year, which involves moving from 26 or 27 staff at that stage to 70 within five years. Money is being provided for this in 2022 and our view is that we need to move more rapidly. The consultants had said we should go to 41 by the end of next year, and as we have actually said we should add on 20 staff, we will be going about five beyond that.

On foot of the capacity review, and seeing what we are seeing now in the cybersecurity space, we will keep re-looking at this and make calls along the way as to whether what the international consultancies have advised is still fit for purpose in a year’s time or two years’ time. On the issue of resources for the centre, I know for a fact we will not have a problem in securing additional resources, if that is required. As of now, we are in a good place in terms of where we need to move to and having clear lines of sight on that.