Paul Kehoe (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I said earlier, the Minister, Deputy Bruton, has overall responsibility for cybersecurity at national level. If business people have come to the Deputy and they are concerned, I ask him to bring those concerns to the attention of the Minister as soon as possible.

If there are Members of this House who are concerned about the inadequacies of Government in this area, there is no point raising them here in the House. They should raise them with the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Bruton, who, with the team working in the departmental cybersecurity centre, has overall responsibility for this area. I have full confidence in this team, led by the Minister, Deputy Bruton.

The Department of Defence and the Defence Forces have a service level agreement with the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment to provide support in the area of national cybersecurity. The overall aim of this agreement is to improve the cybersecurity of the State through various types of assistance, while at the same time ensuring the operational requirements of the Defence Forces are prioritised. As I said, there is a service legal agreement in place under which personnel of the Defence Forces are seconded to the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment but, as of now, no Defence Forces personnel are on secondment.

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