Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their contributions. The big danger people fear is a similar situation to what happened with the HSE. We have vulnerabilities in our big infrastructure companies that can be dangerous. We also have scams that affect individuals. While all of these dangers exist the witnesses have all pointed out in their contributions that there are also great opportunities to be able to develop an industry to work against them and put up a barrier.

There are several sides to this. We need to have security guards who will monitor every company to find out where the weaknesses are and to work on them. We also need alarm systems so that when an attack happens an alarm goes off so everyone knows to shut down everything and do what is needed. Some of this is software based.

I was interested in the development with regard to that too. I think software development and its opportunities is one of the sectors in which Ireland has fallen back in recent years. I was also interested to hear Belfast mentioned and would like to hear more about what has happened there. Obviously, it is close to us. What opportunities might there be in cross-border collaboration? There is clearly an issue here. The tone of the contributions is that as a nation, or an island, we need to work together to build an indigenous industry around all of this. The industry we are trying to combat is a multinational and international industry. There will also have to be a lot of collaboration across all states including Estonia, Israel or wherever else. I would like to understand what level of co-operation there is. How do we ensure we can leverage that to our best potential? I am not sure who can contribute to that. Mr. Larkin might have a comment.