Willie O'Dea (Limerick East, Fianna Fail)

The Department of Defence is not the lead Department. We operate the same system as under the emergency planning provisions. Each Department is primarily responsible for its own security. The central, co-ordinating Department is the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. That has been agreed by the committee on emergency planning.

I am aware of the situation in Estonia, to which Deputy O'Shea adverted. We have invested much time and effort to develop systems to protect information accumulated by the State or other organisations. In the event of an attempted crime, the Garda Síochána is the relevant authority. The Department of Defence has been extremely active. We keep upgrading the equipment, we have people who are well clued in, we have a high level committee constantly assessing the risk of a cyber attack and we have sub-committees that focus on anything that is identified. I have had dozens of meetings with the emergency planning committee since I took over as Minister. It has had very little discussion on cyber crime. I get a threat assessment at each of those meetings, both from the Garda Síochána and from the military. Cyber crime has not featured. The risk of a cyber attack is regarded as being extremely low. However, in deference to Deputy O'Shea's interest in the matter and now that it has been brought to my attention, I will raise it at the meeting of the emergency planning committee due to be held before Christmas. Eleven Departments are represented on that committee and I will ask them to communicate with their own Departments and give me an update on the position.

On the international dimension, we have kept in touch with our international colleagues in this regard because it is a multinational operation. An interesting workshop is being organised by the OSCE for next March, which we hope to attend, on combating cyber crime on a multinational scale.

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