Mr. Fran Thompson:

Since the attack we have substantially invested in cybersecurity. We put in an additional 23 staff in 2021-22 and we are putting in an additional 43 this year on the cybersecurity side. We also quite heavily utilise cybersecurity expertise across the country. Last year we had approximately 48,000 cyber alerts to our dashboards. Those cyber alerts get investigated and some of those could turn into a threat. We have managed to stop those and managed to work with all of our cyber expertise. Cyber expertise is not just one or two people. It is a collaboration of everybody working in the HSE who has digital solutions, first, to guard and make sure they are not being phished. There is phishing going on where people are trying to get information out of them and there is a lot of education that goes on to ensure people are aware of that and know about it. We have mandatory courses on that. Then we have our cyber expertise. We draw both internally and externally to defend the organisation. It is a constant arms race. Cybersecurity requires continual and sustained investment. We have also brought in a senior chief information security officer, CISO, who is in charge of that area and who reports directly to the CEO to ensure we provide as safe and secure a service as possible.