Aidan Davitt (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We are delighted to welcome the Minister of State back to the Seanad. He is quite a frequent visitor here. I would like to start by saying that I was in Estonia quite recently. I was over with CybExer, the company that was to the fore of dealing with the attack on the Estonian state in 2007. It was attacked by Russians of some sort, or whatever. The identity of the attackers is still a bit in the air. From then on, the Estonians have become very aware of these problems. They are at the cutting edge of it. Estonia is one of the best-placed countries to deal with it, and it has some of the biggest companies in the world that deal with it.

Many of these companies will come in, and will look at one's business. They will attack it to see its vulnerabilities and weaknesses, and do a sort of role-play scenario on it. It is a very successful model. It seems to be a bit weaker in Ireland. These guys are coming to Dundalk, in conjunction with Dundalk Institute of Technology. I think the Minister of State is aware of this, and his Department has been involved in it. They are coming to run one of these exercises, which is a type of war game. They will try to hack a business, and play out a whole role-play scenario. That is very exciting. We have started to up our game over the last couple of years on this.

To follow on from that, Estonia has a type of national security card. People's bank details and pharmaceutical drugs are on it. If they have a gun or driving licence, they are all tied to this particular card. It is a very modern way of looking at things, and they have found it very secure and are certainly big advocates for it.

I refer to something the Minister of State mentioned, namely, the number of these scam text messages being sent, particularly to older people, and he might touch on it again in his summation. The telecommunications companies have a greater responsibility to act on behalf of their customers. To have a sort of a laissez-faireattitude to this is wrong. I know the Minister of State feels strongly about this, and it is something he might touch on in his summation.