Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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135. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the number of staff working at the National Cybersecurity Centre in each of the years 2011 to 31 December 2021, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9384/22]

Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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The National Cyber Security Centre, which is located within my Department, was established in 2011 with a broad remit  across the cyber security of Government ICT and critical national infrastructure. The NCSC has three main roles: national incident response; information sharing; and Building Resilience. The NCSC supports Government Departments and other public bodies to improve the resilience and security of their IT systems to better protect services that our people rely upon, and their data. In July 2021 on foot of an capacity review commissioned from an international consultancy, the Government agreed to implement a number of capacity building measures for the National Cyber Security Centre. These measures include increasing the overall fulltime staffing complement of the NCSC to at least 70 over the next 5 years with 20 additional staff to be recruited by the end of 2022.

The current and annual levels of staffing are contained in the table below. It should be noted that prior to 2016 the National Cyber Security Centre had no full-time staff; all of the cyber security specialists were contractors.