Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the amendment to the Order of Business to provide for a debate on the Palestine situation. I will not say anything more about it now.

In raising the following issue, I am not engaging in being wise after the event. The hacking of the HSE computer system is very serious. The suggestion that other State computer systems are equally vulnerable is frightening, to say the least. One only has to think of the possibility of the social welfare systems and those of the Department of Finance and various other places being interfered with by such hackers, to see how serious the situation is. Again, without attempting to be wise after the event, we have had hints in the last year that HSE ICT systems were, to put it charitably, clunky and difficult to adapt to emergency situations. I am conscious of the fact, going back to the time I was in Government, that the public sector has a difficulty sometimes in commissioning ICT expertise and systems, and is sometimes the victim of overzealous and overpriced proposals. It is weak in that respect.

However, we now live in a society where our dependence on these systems is growing. It is all very well for people to come into this House and talk about climate change and the rest of it, but thinking about it, as we move towards the use of electric cars, electric transport and no solid fuel, all of these things are driving us directly towards a situation where, for instance, electricity will be the absolute lifeline to all of us in the sense that water was to our ancestors. I must be guaranteed that cybersecurity is taken very seriously. We must have guarantees that there are back-up systems and internal firewalls in place, and that the matter is taken as seriously as anything else in the community - as seriously, for instance, as the pandemic. The damage that can be done to us by repeated hacking from China, North Korea, Russia or wherever these people are free to operate with impunity is huge.

I ask the Leader to arrange for a Minister with overall responsibility - perhaps the Minister with responsibility for the public service - to come in here and tell us clearly and in a properly organised way precisely what steps the Government is taking to protect us from calamities. In my view, this is only the first shot in a war and I do not know whether we have any defences in this war or whether we have done anything seriously to counter this threat.