Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of the presenters. It really is great to have the entire spectrum of the education and training section before the committee. I will direct specific questions to the witnesses, starting with Professor O'Shea. I have been to MTU, and the committee should visit to see what is going on there. There is great work going on. Professor O'Shea mentioned to me the need for a standard qualification or curriculum that would meet the needs of cybersecurity in Ireland. She has expressed some concern that people tag the word "cyber" onto a degree or postgraduate programme without really hitting the nail on the head and getting into the work that she does down in Cork with respect to postgraduate programmes. I ask Professor O'Shea to give us something on that in a moment. I will move on but Professor O'Shea or her colleague might answer that question.

Due to being limited in time, I have to ask all my questions upfront and then we call the witnesses in for answers. Previously at the University of Galway, I met Professor Acton who has a very interesting programme coming up in the area of crisis management and the like. I ask him to give us some insight into what is going on there.

Dr. Lee from Athlone is also here from the software side and I would be interested in getting his insight. The reason I am asking for this is that this is a one-time opportunity for the committee to hear what is going on in these sectors, particularly around the asks they will have.

I move on now to Mr. Larkin. Cyber Ireland does tremendous work and there is no getting away from it. As he is the chairman of the organisation, I am delighted to see him before the committee again. He will also have concerns about the qualifications and streams that are coming through. More importantly, he has some great insights into the benefits to our economy of putting strong cyberprogrammes in place. Will he quantify where he sees the likely returns on investment that there would be from there?

I move on to Mr. Kelly. I apologise to him for not getting things right in having him listed as one of the speakers. He is the top man in the AMTCE in Dundalk and he has some very ambitious ideas there, particularly in delivering programmes in association with Mr. Hyland in the area of information technology-operational technology, IT-OT. A lot of work has been done by Mr. Kelly, Mr. Hyland and Mr. Umit Uygur in putting a programme together which is going to be most interesting and should be replicated around the county. It delivers skills so that the people with the skills can feed into programmes like that being run by Professor O'Shea in MTU. We should have a constant stream of people going through to Professor O'Shea, Professor Acton, Dr. Lee and people like that to build the skill set in the country.

The last part of my questioning is directed at Mr. Umit Uygur. He spoke about public procurement. It is a matter of some concern to me that the tendency in public procurement is always to go for the big name. This means that small indigenous companies that are developing really interesting software are not recognised. To quote a civil servant who answered a question for me one time about trying out something new, "We do not do pilot projects in this country". Does Mr. Umit Uygur think that is something the small SME start-ups are suffering under? Are we afraid to take the chance in case it goes wrong? Organisations have to be proven before they can feature in the public sector. I have asked those questions. We will start with Professor O'Shea and we will work our way around the academic group and then work down the list.