Dr. Richard Browne:

To clarify the roles, as this is an important point, the nature of the Internet, which is a privatised, fractured network, means that there is a differential response required to other security challenges. The national security issues around this are embedded in more normal corporate governance kind of issues. I will explain how we do what we do. Then I will cover the other points. The NCSC deals with cybersecurity, that is to say, the resilience and protection of critical infrastructure, national incident response and national incident response co-ordination. Increasingly, there are issues on setting standards for issues such as 5G telecoms and other related issues. That is our role. The Garda has two roles in this regard, one of which is investigating and prosecuting cybercrime. That is one issue and it is related to a series of fraud and economic crime activities. Second, it also has a domestic national security role. We deal with it on both of those. The Defence Forces and the Department of Defence, the defence establishment, obviously have the defence of the State against acts of armed aggression from the Defence Acts but they also have a cyberdefence role in terms of protecting their own networks against attacks from whatever in the cyber domain. That is how the roles generally pan out.

How we interact is on a number of different levels. On an operational level in terms of incident response we work closely with all of the uniformed agencies as well as, from time to time, the Data Protection Commission. A significant proportion of cybersecurity incidents are also data protection incidents, which is worth keeping in mind. The national security co-ordination function is exercised here primarily through the NSAC in the Department of the Taoiseach.

Our interactions with national security issues at the higher level flow through that office in close co-operation with the Defence Forces and the Garda and-----