Malcolm Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for the response but I am afraid it does not tell us a lot more than we already knew from the reply I received this time last year. I am worried that issues like the elimination of the Windows 7 estate are still appearing as part of the process. There is a lot of emphasis placed on the leadership of a chief information security officer within the HSE but if one visits a jobs website one will see that post currently being advertised at a new national director level. That post has still not been filled, although I appreciate that somebody was filling in on an interim basis.

One of the questions I asked was about the total cost to the taxpayer to date but that is still not clear from the answer. In 2021 there was an immediate cost of €102 million. We have been told that there has been additional allocation in 2024 of €55 million but we have not been told the running cost to the taxpayer. Given some of the recommendations that were made, I am very concerned that, as of this moment, there is neither a chief technology and transformation officer nor a chief information security officer in place within the HSE.

Given the seriousness of this issue, there is very little in this reply. It is essentially the same reply that I received last year. The Minister of State will be aware of the implications of another cyberattack on our health service but his reply does not give me a great degree of certainty that it could not happen again. I ask the Minister of State to relay my concerns to the Minister for Health, particularly with regard to those senior posts. I am also still looking for the final running cost to the taxpayer.