Portarlington-based independent TD Cathal Berry says that the position of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has been vacant for more than a year because the salary isn’t sufficient to attract a suitable candidate.
Deputy Berry, who is a TD for the Kildare South constituency that also includes Portarlington, Killenard and Ballybrittas, is a former Deputy Commander of the Army Ranger Wing, and has hit out the limitations of the NCSC following the cyber attack on the HSE and the Department of Health.
“You’re looking at the head of IT security for Ireland being paid €89,000 so they couldn’t get someone to take a job,” he said in an interview with the Irish Times.
“(The NCSC) is supposed to be kicking ass when it comes to all the other Government departments so you’d expect someone to have the appropriate status so they can interact with secretaries general across the Government service”.
“Our capability is improving but it is still very limited,” he added in a statement.
“The capacity of the National Cyber Security Centre needs to improve on three fronts – premises, budget and staff.
“It’s incredible that we still don’t have a dedicated premises yet and their budget of €5 million a year is not sufficient.
2Most importantly, from a talent perspective, we need to improve the amount of people there.
“There is currently only 25 people on the staff and the appointment of the Director of the National Cyber Security Centre has been vacant for the last year.”
Deputy Berry added that “the National Cyber Security Centre was intended to be a multi-agency entity with the support of members of An Garda Síochana and the Defence Forces”.
“However, as a result of the staff retention crisis in the Defence Forces, two seats are vacant and that’s simply just not good enough. The Defence Forces need their own dedicated cyber unit.”
“This is just a criminal attack from a small criminal entity, if this was a full-on military grade state-on-state attack we’d be looking at much more serious consequences down-stream.”
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