Dr. Richard Browne:

There is a lot in that. The Senator and I have many areas of agreement. There are two elements to the question of power, authority and independence. Because we have a national security function, independence is something that will never happen for the NCSC. That is a good thing. We are subject to the political system and all the governance and control that come with that. That said, the Senator's last point makes it very clearly; the elevation of the level of the director of the NCSC indicates the importance it is being given across Government, not just in the Department but at a whole-of-system level. It also fully reflects the focus on this across this security system in the state. As the Senator will be aware, there are five domains of warfare, including space. How we manage the fusion of intelligence sources around all that is somewhat in flux. Work on a national security strategy has been in process for a while but it is essentially complete. It addresses many of these questions. As it has not been agreed, obviously, I cannot go into it in any detail.

There are two further questions that are particularly interesting to deal with upfront. The Senator asked how many staff we ultimately need. The figure of 70 is a start, but I agree we will need to go significantly beyond that. The facility we are building in Dublin 4 has space for many more than that. That should be a general guide. I do not think anybody has accused me of lacking ambition in this regard.

The Senator asked about our role in having staff sitting in other organisations. We do not have secondments out of the organisation simply because we are keeping the staff for what they fundamentally need to do right now. The NCSC needs to grow and in due course we will be in a position to have secondees elsewhere. We need to keep two things in mind in that regard. First, we have a sensor platform deployed across Departments. We do not need to have someone in the office because we are watching externally from a distance. Second, we have a rapid-reaction team that can be sent into offices if we have an incident. We use that on a relatively regular basis, most pertinently in the Coombe incident before Christmas, which was a public incident.

Do we have sufficient power under the legislation? No, we do not. There are things we need to do that we cannot do at present. We are limited not by our technology or by our people in some ways, but by our statutory powers. That is in process and work is significantly advanced on all that. I am sure the committee will be engaged in that process when the legislation comes before it. Some of that will clarify our role vis-à-visother organisations in the State. Some of it will create new powers which have not previously been in anybody's hands in the State. I am sure it will be challenging for people to understand why. That is a process we will get to in due course.

Regarding research, we work very closely through Cyber Ireland with academia and bilaterally with academia on the skills piece. Much more remains to be done there. Regarding research, the Senator should watch this space; we hope to make a public announcement quite soon. I agree there is a question. It is covered in measures 14 and 16 of the national cybersecurity strategy around how we fund and structure cybersecurity research in the State. We do not have a singular hub of expertise. We have a number of university departments with significant expertise and universities with a background in this space, but no singular hub. That is something we feel needs to be addressed and it is covered in the strategy. That is also in process at the moment.