Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is 18 months since the Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications fought hard to have Dr. Browne's role properly recognised and remunerated. Speaking of recruitment, has Dr. Browne been given sufficient leeway regarding salaries to attract the type of person with the type of skills he requires or is he limited by public sector?

Regarding the secondment of the Army officer to the talent centre, the officer spent roughly two years there and came back highly skilled. I have been to the place. It is an amazing entity and I am delighted. I hear that the centre has very strong links with Estonia, which I am delighted to hear. Is it not a terrible pity that when this officer returns, he is not sent straight back into Dr. Browne's office rather than off to somewhere else in the Defence Forces? Is this something Dr. Browne would look for?

I have contacted Dr. Browne through my office for a private meeting and I thank him for his availability on these matters. I am fully aware of the job he does. Security issues are better discussed elsewhere instead of here. That is something we will talk about again.

I am sure that in Dr. Browne's world, legislation moves forward at a snail's pace. He needs far more powers than he has. Is there anything we can do to accelerate the legislation that is important to him?

The issue of certification is in the middle of Dr. Browne's presentation. Recently I attended a lecture on cybersecurity given by the head of cyber at Ernst & Young. He made the point that college graduates with a degree in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies with cyber are hardly cybersecurity experts and certainly not worth the sort of money they think they are worth. The notion that you are moving towards certification and certification recognition is a major milestone. Looking at Dr. Browne's presentation, it has been one year since I met him at a meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications. Progress has been phenomenal for which he is to be congratulated.

I think he is aware of the fact we are working with the National Advanced Manufacturing Training Centre of Excellence in Dundalk and a number of other manufacturing centres or advanced centres around the country on skills-based programmes. I want to bounce one or two things off Dr. Browne. Would he agree with me that one of the problems in the private sector and maybe in the public sector to a certain degree is the fact that our chief executive officers or chief financial officers do not exactly speak the language of cyber so the tendency is to leave that to the IT department and hope for the best? One of the programmes we hope to deliver through the National Advanced Manufacturing Training Centre of Excellence is a cyber-awareness programme for CEOs right down to a programme for 12 to 18-year-olds. Dr. Browne's staff have been very supportive and very available in that area. I hope skills certification would lead to a much better level of skills. I would be interested in hearing Dr. Browne's view on what specific skills he sees as important. I am not so sure that everybody has to have an academic qualification. I think we can go the further education and training route and move up the skills pot from there.

The other thing we have been slow on is public information. It is there but I often wonder why we do not have one slot per week on the news at 6 p.m. or 9 p.m. where we openly discuss cyber and all things surrounding it.

Regarding cyber attacks, I am conscious that Munster Technological University, MTU, was another entity in the country that was attacked. As Dr. Browne rightly pointed out, no entity is safe. Everybody has their vulnerabilities. It strikes me that every time we have a major attack, we go to the Big Five, who do not necessarily have cyber professionals on their staff. Does Dr. Browne have a team of indigenous companies to which he can turn to support him in the work he is trying to do? I will leave it at that for a few minutes. I might come back with one or two other things. I acknowledge that in his short time in office, Dr. Browne has certainly moved the organisation way further than I would have expected in that period of time.