Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 3 November 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on European Union Affairs

EU Cybersecurity Strategy: Discussion

Mr. Ciarán Cuffe:

From the parliamentary representative perspective, Members of the Parliament monitor elections mainly beyond the EU's borders. I have done a training exercise for that. Increasingly, the focus of election monitoring is on the electronic side. There is monitoring of social media and the integrity of the ballot box. As some elections move more online than is our experience here, we increasingly need IT skills to understand what is going on and safeguard the process. It will require a new set of skills for those of us interested in the monitoring process. I imagine the European Commission is also moving with the times and ensuring its skill set changes on this. I will leave it up to Ms Boix Alonso to answer on that side of it.