Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I and, I am sure, all members of my group join others in expressing sympathy to the Connor family. It is a tragedy to lose somebody in a road traffic accident.

Two and a half years ago, after the cyberattack on the HSE, I started to involve myself in matters cyber. Initially, I worked with Louth and Meath ETB. That spread out to the University of Galway, Munster Technological University and many other education centres around the country. I have had the honour of leading two delegations to Estonia to visit CCDCOE, which is the advisory centre in cyber, and CR14, which is a major national infrastructure cyber range, and I have been instrumental in bringing together a memorandum of understanding with a company called CybExer, which will provide cyber range technology to Irish centres that are running cyber-awareness programmes.

Why am I bringing this up today? I believe Ireland should be at the forefront of cybersecurity. We should be one of the leading nations, given the amount of information technology infrastructure there is in this country. To that end, I would like a debate in this House. I believe we should fund cyber-awareness programmes. We have coming online a programme developed by National Geographicfor national school children which we want to pilot in the near future. We also have a number of cyber-awareness programmes for chief executive officers, chief financial officers and so on down through the business system. If we are to get on top of cyber, however, we have to start delivering cyber-awareness programmes and we have to do so as a State service. To that end, I know Pat Larkin, the chairman of Cyber Ireland, has taken on the call with me that we should ring-fence €1 billion over ten years to deliver cyber programmes. All we need is a serious attack in this country, and if that happens, we will lose some of the major foreign direct investment.

I put on record my deep appreciation for Commandant Frank Hickey, who works with CCDCOE in Tallinn. It was such an honour to be there, to find a member of our Defence Forces, and before him, in the earlier one, Rónán O'Flaherty, a Galway man. I also record my appreciation for our ambassador there. I know everybody in this room will say that, when we go abroad, the ambassadors we meet do a fantastic job, but James Sherry pushed himself beyond. He had a Minister, Paschal Donohoe, visiting at the same time we were there and he found time for all of us. It is wonderful representation for Ireland abroad. I would like a debate with the Minister for further and higher education, Simon Harris, on cyber and the delivery of cyber-awareness programmes.