Mr. Ciarán Cuffe:

The dreadful thing about being a Member of the European Parliament is that we pass the directives but we do not receive sufficient feedback on their implementation within member states. That is certainly the situation in the case of the committees on which I sit. However, I note that, anecdotally, several State agencies draw attention to the risk of cyberattacks. Each year, Irish Water drew attention to the critical risks to its infrastructure in delivering drinking water to the public, industrial users and the IT sector. All it would take is for one or two pumps to be taken over to dramatically damage the resilience of our entities. There may be a role with regard to quizzing the institutions in Ireland that have responsibility for implementing those directives.

In addition, we are seeing an extraordinary increase in the number of connected devices. The Internet of things is taking over the world, from washing machines to teddy bears, and we need to educate citizens on good practice in the context of cybersecurity. As I was leaving Brussels last week, I noticed a big billboard advertising cybersecurity month, but I do not know whether that permeated through to national campaigns or campaigns within organisations such as this one or State bodies. In a world that is increasingly connected and where, due to the pandemic, many people are working remotely, the IT links we have are crucial to carrying out our daily work, so it is important that the committee ensures the resources are available at a national level to make sure that we are cyber vigilant, that exercises are carried out and that there is in the public domain a report on the main bodies in Ireland and how well they are performing. Just like the generals fighting the last war, next time it probably will not be the HSE that is under attack, but it could be the energy networks that keep the lights on or the water coming out of taps or the infrastructure that allows us to appear in committee rooms. There is a need to hold public bodies in particular up to scrutiny.