Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As part of Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union, this country, in association with the Estonian Ministry of Defence and the European Defence Agency, hosted a high level conference on cybersecurity co-operation in the European Union in Brussels on 20 June last. The conference was attended by representatives of EU member states, the External Action Service, the European Commission, EUROPOL and NATO, as well as non-governmental and private sector participants. The objective of the conference was to advance the debate on the preparedness of EU member states to face cybersecurity threats at national level and across the EU as a whole. In his address at the conference, the Minister, Deputy Shatter, said it was his ambition to ensure the work embarked on during the conference would help to set the parameters for the implementation of an effective framework of collaboration on cybersecurity and defence among EU member states. He also said he hoped it would support the implementation of the recently published EU cybersecurity strategy. The conference determined that a failure to co-operate in the area of cybersecurity would undermine our collective security and demonstrate a lack of understanding of the escalating threat we face. It was acknowledged that no one organisation or state has the capacity to address the cybersecurity issue on its own. As such, a co-ordinated approach involving the Commission and the justice and home affairs and Common Foreign and Security Policy bodies, working through the relevant Councils and the Council working group on a common and shared agenda, is essential if a comprehensive EU approach to cybersecurity and defence is to be pursued at national and EU levels. The conference concluded that the scale and complexity of cybersecurity threats demand a cohesive application of all the instruments available to the EU. Various sectors of society in the public and private spheres need to be engaged and responsible. The conference also concluded that there is a need to ensure there is co-operation and co-ordination between the relevant authorities of the member states.

See this speech in context