Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Apologies, I did not answer the Deputy's other question on IT spent. I will do so quickly. The HSE spend in 2019 was €130 million; last year, it was €145 million. We have allocated a significant increase this year to €203 million. I am sure he will welcome the fact that in this year's national service plan, I allocated funding to almost double the ICT staff. From a base staff of 400, an increase of 358 has been added.

On the question concerning sensitive patient information, the latest briefing I got alluded to files put up online that were heavily redacted. At the time of the briefing, there had not been verification as to whether these were genuine files. My understanding from the briefing was that criminal organisations will use false records to try to extract funding.

On the important question the Deputy asked about the potential extent of the data that have been downloaded, the security experts are working server by server to come up with a detailed briefing on exactly that.

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