Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his response. Cyberattacks signify a grave threat to countries across Europe, yet we are not doing enough to protect ourselves. One example was in 2017 when Ireland's power grid was the subject of a suspected nation-state attack, which was discovered two months after the initial attack. It was not detected by Ireland; it was instead notified to the Irish authorities by the UK's national cyber security centre. This is an example of how cyber attacks represent a threat to our State infrastructure and to the broader foreign direct investment here. It should not take a serious attack to properly resource and plan a significant, modern defence matter, which is being reflected across many countries in the EU. We need to resource it.

It was reported during the summer that the Defence Forces stood down an internal cybersecurity team because of the lack of personnel and qualified staff and a further exodus of specialised personnel. That team was responsible for monitoring the security of military IT networks to safeguard them from hostile state attacks. Not only do we have an issue with the unit within the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, due to the exodus of personnel, there are question marks over monitoring our own internal networks in the Defence Forces. That is also a concern.

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