Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Government's mid-term review of the National Cyber Security Strategy 2019-2024, which was published in the last few days. Next week, I will bring a delegation of academics to Tallinn in Estonia to visit Foundation CR14, the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, CCDCOE, and a number of other places. It is important that we get on top of our game with respect to cyber and cybersecurity.

I am delighted that the National Cyber Security Centre is about to follow up on the suggestion I made some time ago to get behind the training programmes and certification of cyber professionals. We need to establish in this country a benchmark for what is an academic cyber programme. There are too many programmes in our universities that have "cyber" tagged on to the end of them, with graduates coming out believing they are cyber professionals. We need two or three tiers of cyber professionals. We need operators who go through further education and training. Then we need risk managers who are capable of managing risks within an organisation without having any hands-on requirement in the area of cyber. We also need good quality undergraduate, master's and PhD programmes. We can be the best in the world. We can lead the world in cyber and we should.

On a final point, a lot of nonsense is spoken about who we can and cannot liaise or co-operate with when it comes to defence and security matters. There is absolutely no problem in co-operating with countries that are members of NATO in order to underpin our cyber needs. That is something we want to do.

I note Martin Murray has left the Chamber. I am rather surprised to hear that a young man like him is retiring. I wish him well and hope he has a good retirement.