Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

We are developing such a strategy. It is important to emphasise that it is not necessary to use cloud computing to make cultural material available on-line. A great deal of cultural material is available for free on the Internet already. This is a very important point. We have all seen the huge interest in the census material from the turn of the 20th century and it is perfectly accessible on-line. Cloud computing is very important; it is a new way of providing computing facilities in which computing becomes a service. My Department is involved in the transforming public service agenda in developing this. The UK Government has announced a high-level strategy; it intends to use cloud computing and to develop a Government cloud for that purpose called the "G-Cloud". However, the UK Government has not announced how it intends to do this or the timeframe for doing so. Its plans are aspirational. My Department has already put in place an equivalent to the planned G-Cloud. This is "Government networks", which is a countrywide high-capacity highly resilient infrastructure that allows public bodies to interconnect with each other relatively easily and cheaply. In addition, it facilitates shared access to high bandwidth Internet access and direct access to a wide range of centrally shared systems and services.

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