Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As we know, because they got themselves into a bit of hot water about it, some of our third level constituents have, to be fair, developed technology which has been quite competitive. There certainly is an option for this. It is an interesting area and I welcome the discussion on it.

My next point is on governance and oversight, on which Mr. Honan might have a view. I am a member of the committees on justice and climate action. In recent months the committees of the Houses of the Oireachtas have had discussions on sea cables. I tabled a question on this to the Minister for Defence this morning with regard to investment in the protection of these cables and undersea sonar. From a parliamentary perspective, governance and oversight of the national security sphere, in which I include cybersecurity, is sadly lacking in this jurisdiction. We do not have any. We literally do not have oversight in the Houses of the Oireachtas, other than the Minister and, presumably, the Cabinet. I am not sure it is in the best interests of the Irish people for it to be known to only certain souls in the State. I do not know who these people are. It is probably not a place we should be as developed advanced democracy. Does Mr Honan have a view on this? I am not speaking about a special committee with eyes only where the door gets locked but there should be an oversight function outside of the ordinary committee structure, whereby the NCSE comes before this committee or the relevant committee and speaks about its budgetary expenditure. There needs to be another layer of oversight for such organisations. Does Mr Honan have an opinion on this?