Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of the witnesses who have attended. In fairness, some of them have dealt with it in the sense that Ireland is almost a tech superpower and, on that basis, there is the idea that we have a huge amount of cybersecurity expertise, although we have not necessarily put that together. We all welcome the fact there was a capacity review of the NCSC and, following that, premises were put in place and the numbers are being increased. We also had Dr. Richard Browne before the committee. We have probably got a greater amount of information than we were able to get at the time of the HSE attack but the fact is the world has changed following the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. A number of Russian diplomats or operatives, or whatever term anyone wants to put on them, have been expelled.

We all know about the idea of asymmetric warfare at this point in time, and whether it is hybrid or cyber, we have to take it into account in a major way. It is something we have to look at. We all got the idea of what we were facing at the time of the HSE attack. We have an imminent threat from criminal enterprises and I would make an argument that some of these may operate as subcontractors of the Russian state and others who can employ them from time to time. Dr. Browne stated that that has not been proven, but he was not inferring there was no chance that this was the case and he was just putting the facts on the table.

I would like to get the expert opinion of the witnesses. I understand that a significant amount of the defences are making sure that decent digital hygiene is being operated. In the case of the HSE, we saw that was not the case. Obviously, there was a way in that allowed it to happen and, beyond that, there were no fire doors to cut it off and the connectivity did not have the protections that were required. To deal with the present circumstances, I would like to get the knowledge from the experts in the field. I ask the witnesses to state very specifically the risks that we are facing and what exactly it would require for us to protect ourselves. I think there is confusion in the sense that the NCSC works technically at the national security analysis centre. It is a body that works out of the Department of the Taoiseach and it seeks to-----