David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The witnesses are very welcome, and I thank them for a very interesting presentation.

If we thought about it for long enough, it was probably one of the most frightening presentations we have received since our committee was established. War is spoken of as boots on ground, but this war is fingers on keyboards. It is invisible and extraordinarily dangerous. We should almost have a full-time committee dealing with this.

The HSE was attacked, possibly by a state-sponsored actor, a little while ago and it cost us tens of millions of euro, if not more. Are we, as part of the West, in a war? Can the witnesses say whether any attacks been deterred? Maybe they can; maybe they cannot. It is a cross between "The Matrix" and the 2020 film, "The Perfect Weapon". I am sure the witnesses have seen the latter. It was quite scary. They mentioned interference in elections. We know about the national Democratic campaign in the US 2016 elections, when emails were hacked and leaked and other things happened. That is frightening. The witnesses might say something about the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, Hybrid CoE, in Finland and what our involvement with it is.

If you are in a war situation without war having been declared and if you are being attacked, you have to defend yourself.

Interestingly, the witnesses stated that the Government should examine the implications of the development of offensive cyber capabilities for defensive purposes - "offensive" means attacking someone else and going on the offensive – to increase the cost for perpetrators of cyberattacks, or in other words, to make it not worth their while. If people attacked us, they would come away from it worse off because we would attack them in return. This is a war by another name. It is hidden and in the cyberspace – the Matrix, as it were.

I am not sure about the witnesses' point regarding the microgeneration programme. If our national grid was attacked, damaged and shut down – I hope that does not happen – I am unsure as to how panels on houses could compensate at that stage. We have wind energy, but I presume the wind generation infrastructure would also be impacted, given that the whole grid would have been attacked. Other agencies could be attacked as well, for example, financial institutions. From what the witnesses are saying, the cables across the Atlantic do not need to be cut for a cyberwar to inflict immense damage.

Will the witnesses explain the deterrence playbook that the Hybrid CoE has discussed? How do we deter these attacks from happening and should we put more money and resources into deterrence and taking it more seriously? They referred to a black swan event, which is effectively something that does not exist until it does. The Black Swanis an interesting book. The witnesses referred to the military and the civilian working together and getting the best from both. Is that happening in Ireland to the extent it should and what can we do to ensure it is?

How does all of this interfere with our neutrality? Does it change our definition of "neutrality"? What does "neutrality" mean? Can we sit back, not do anything and let everyone else get on with it or must we side with the West, which would scupper our neutrality? If we are in a war situation with someone else, would the triple lock come into play? We normally think of war as boots on the ground, but this is fingers on keyboards and can be far more damaging in some ways. The first time this happened was the Stuxnet attack, when a nuclear power station in Iran was allegedly interfered with by the US. Iran did not know what was happening and the whole station just shut down and things went very wrong. It took Iran a long time to figure out what happened, but I understand a malware worm was sent into the power station's systems and caused a great deal of damage. That could be happening constantly.

I have asked a few questions and have not even discussed the bots yet. My colleague mentioned AI. We have seen how AI can mimic even the Chair's voice and use it to activate secure systems and so forth. We are only scratching the surface of AI.

I thank the witnesses for their presentations, which were not only interesting, but extremely important at this time.