Cormac Devlin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for those figures and I welcome the various increases the Minister referred to from 2016 to the present. Given the pandemic, there will undoubtedly be further increases.

I wish to focus on the cyberattack. Obviously, great work is done by the Defence Forces across the board, but given the recent impact of the attack on our health service and the Minister's comments earlier about the European element and co-operation, which is interesting and we will focus on that in the next week or so in our questions, is the Minister aware of the Norwegian Cyber Defence Force, which was established in 2012? I understand it has a complement of approximately 1,500 personnel. In view of Ireland's key pillar of fintech, pharmaceutical and other important industries, it is important that the country and Government would focus on funding and having a resilient anti-cyberattack strategy. Perhaps the Minister will comment on that.

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