Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to hear that the Deputy has taken the time to meet ComReg. It has 156 employees at the moment and has sanction for 177. ComReg came to my Department looking for an additional 55 employees. It was looking for specific increases in grades and salaries and so on, and that is under consideration at the moment. However, it does have sanction to move to 177.

The Deputy mentioned some of the important functions ComReg has. One of them is stopping the public from receiving scam texts and calls. I worked with the organisation and the network operators to introduce a number of changes to prevent this from happening. We have brought in six different measures. I will not outline them because they would be of use to the scammers themselves.

In addition, we have a new commissioner coming in. This is Helen Dixon, who was the Data Protection Commissioner. She will take up the position of commissioner. She will join Garett Blaney and Robert Mourik, who as I said, I work with closely. ComReg will have a new function under the Network and Information Security Directive for cyber security. It will be the competent authority for cyber security in a number of sectors and it needs to have staff to carry out that function.

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