Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

To back that up, the key is that it has to be an international response. The response in this case included other governments providing us with examples of the same malware and what they did to protect against it. That is the way this works. It is a global phenomenon and problem. The nature of the Internet is that it that connected network. A key thing coming out of this incident is strengthening our defence systems but also using it as an opportunity to further enhance our use of the technology while making it secure. We should be careful not to create a paradigm in the likes of the health system which has had huge benefits and advantages from the use of ICT equipment and new ways of doing things. Perhaps one reason we were particularly vulnerable at this time was because with remote working, there is a very wide network of devices, often remote from central facilities, which is by its nature less secure. It is why these networks tend to be attacked. In response, we should not recoil from the use of ICT infrastructure but double down on making it safer by design, building in resilience. There are attacks all the time. It depends on what one calls an attack. It could be something as seemingly insignificant as a phishing incident or an effort to get someone to link in to allow someone into the network. That in itself is not the key issue; it is, as the Minister of State said, the further line of defence once they get in the network. We must be careful not to lose the great benefits from the use of this ICT infrastructure but to design in the defence systems within it.

See this speech in context