Dr. Richard Browne:

I thank the Deputy for the three questions. I can be relatively brief in terms of the hierarchy. The NCSC is an executive office, a part of the Department of communications. The reason for that, historically, is that EU cyberpolicy comes through the telecoms working parties. Our policy stream is in the telecoms policy area. Aside from that, I am on the managing board of the Department and sit in that way. The future of that obviously remains to be seen but right now it is a very effective way of working, in the sense that we have direct linear access to policymaking and they to us. In terms of hierarchy, we have responsibility for the cybersecurity domain. So we are the State's primary cyber defence entity. The Defence Forces have four domains, we have one. That is the first question.

On staffing, this was partially covered already. It is important to say that the rate at which we can grow is curtailed. We cannot readily add 50 staff in the morning if we want to. What we can do is progressively grow by recruiting on a steady basis and always going to the market twice a year for different panels. We pull people from the market as time goes on and we are growing in that way. Right now, today, we have extended two panels . We are drawing from panels at CSS and CSR and at those two grades, we have at least 20 more on each. We have staff there we can draw from when we get the sanction for additional staffing. It is not easy, but by going regularly to market we find there are always people with the right skills who want to come and work for us. There are not 500 of them, but there are enough to meet our needs in the short term.

To the Deputy's last question, it was in my statement, we will be going back and looking for further staffing, particularly for NIS2. If we look across the operational domain and elsewhere, we have a substantial requirement for additional growth. That will be put into a multi-annual plan. The work is under way at the moment. We will be bringing that up the line in our Department in the next little while. We are looking at a three-year growth plan for the organisation. To answer the Deputy's question, no, not right now with what we have. We need to grow more.