I assure the Deputy that I am deploying and implementing measures instead of just producing strategies or documents that go on shelves. I am keen to see things happen, knowing that my time as Minister of State is not infinite. Certainly, the idea of removing best before and sticking with use by is a good suggestion, as is the allocation of parts of retail use for people with their own containers, which is certainly something worth looking at. I will address the problem of the Deputy putting questions to Departments…

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I am answering this matter because the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, recently delegated authority over waste policy and the circular economy to me. I appreciate that the Deputy has had a long series of engagements on this issue and that it is not yet resolved. The waste management market in Ireland is serviced by private companies on a side-by-side competition basis. Prices in the market are matters between those companies and…

The Deputy is correct that there is a Government decision from 2017. I am restating that. It is a problem that needs to be solved. My Department has been examining this issue in detail for some time and has engaged with relevant stakeholders, including representative organisations and the HSE, in an effort to see how best to support persons with long-term incontinence with respect to the disposal of medical incontinence wear. However, there are complex issues at play in this area which are understandable given the …

I thank the Senator for the question and am delighted to answer it. The ECT is a political declaration on international energy co-operation which was signed in 1994 and entered into force in 1998. Currently, there are 53 signatories and contracting parties to the treaty, including all EU member states, except Italy, the UK, Japan and many former Soviet states. The ECT provides a multilateral framework for energy co-operation that is unique under international law. It is designed to promote energy security through t…

Do I give two replies to the Senator or just one?

The position of the Department is to attempt reform rather than to withdraw. If we cannot get what we want out of reform, we will withdraw. We are clear there is a division between member states. Outside of the EU there is a division between the different parties that have signed up and have different ambitions from us. The treaty was formed at the end of the Cold War in a completely different world, where the ambitions and long-term strategies of different countries were all about energy security and being in a ch…

I thank the Senator for raising the issue of the backlog of driving tests in Tipperary, which I am taking on behalf of my colleague, the Minister of Sate with responsibility for transport, Deputy Naughton. Under the Road Safety Act and as provided by the Oireachtas, the driver testing service is an operational matter for the Road Safety Authority, RSA. Specific details about locations and the backlog in Tipperary are matters for the RSA. If the Senator contacts the RSA and has any difficulty, he can come back to me…

If the Senator has any specific proposals or recommendations he would like to submit to me, I am happy to take them on board. In terms of driver theory testing, at the start of June we are starting a new online driver theory service. It should always have been like that but the need has been underlined by the pandemic. This will mean 3,000 people will be able to do their driver theory test online, which will help us to move forward. We have also had a problem with training and with people getting driving lessons, b…

I will answer this as the NCSC has come under my remit in the recent past. The first question was about the capacity review. My colleague, the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, ordered a capacity review at the start of the year. Following a competitive tender that was awarded to FireEye, which is one of the most reputed cybersecurity firms in the world. Since that time, it has been examining on a comparative basis how the NCSC matches up with other similar bodies around the world. The compan…

I agree with that, and I will recommend to my colleagues in government that there should be regular briefings for Opposition spokespersons because this is a common threat to all of us and we should respond to it with common purpose. It is not an issue on which to divide.

I want to deal with the question of who is in charge. Of course, somebody has to be in charge. This is a criminal investigation, it is a crime scene, and the Garda is in charge of the investigation. At the same time, the National Cyber Security Centre has a statutory role in incident response. It is a European directive so when there is a cybersecurity incident, they are the people who go in to assist and they bring in outside contractors. However, it is the HSE's IT staff who have the absolute knowledge to be able…

The Deputy asked about the information provided to staff to prevent these types of events from happening. There is a parallel with public health advice that it is not the Department of Health that prevents one from being infected but the information it provides to the public and the hygiene habits that, in this case, translate to security habits. It is the information and education about not clicking on links, using strong passwords and all the messages that have to be repeated again and again and making sure that …

All the time, these software attacks are upgraded in response to the cybersecurity people putting in defences against them. It is an arms race. There is a continuing battle between the two. It is something that we just have to continue with. We cannot fight it alone. We have been attacked but the same and variants of this software have attacked sites successfully in the United States, including the Colonial Pipeline attack, and the attacks within the UK, despite the fact that it has agencies such as the National Se…

I thank the Deputy. I appreciate there is a complex arrangement of various groups. Regarding capacity, the capacity review of the NCSC was commissioned by the Minister, Deputy Ryan, in January. The reviewers analysed the strengths and weaknesses of the NCSC, the physical, hardware and personnel resources it needed, how it was doing and how it compared with similar organisations. I will be very reluctant to publish the review when it is issued as it is a guide to the vulnerabilities of the NCSC. I will certainly be …

I acknowledge that the Defence Forces are involved in this incident. Many members of the Defence Forces are involved in rebuilding these systems. I want to see the Defence Forces' role in military intelligence and cyber security strengthened. I would like to see whatever is necessary done to attract candidates to carry out those roles.

A risk analysis is carried out of all the major critical infrastructure bodies, especially the HSE because it is so large and vulnerable. At this stage, I will not publish the vulnerabilities of specific organisations, the measures that they were asked to do or whether they were carried out. That is because we have a live incident.

We will have a lot of time to investigate what actually happened.

We have had level 5 pandemic restrictions since the start of the year and are in the middle of a human virus crisis, and have now been hit with a computer virus crisis. It is important that this is done right. It will be difficult to publish it. Deputy Berry asked if we can publish this.

The Deputy will understand that I cannot publish the vulnerabilities of the critical infrastructure bodies in the country and say to the world that these are the places where these critical organisations are at the weakest, where they can easily attack.

The Deputy said at the start that she had no idea about this area. I think she has proven that.