Martin Kenny
Ceist:92. Deputy Martin Kenny asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications what plans his Department has to support ComReg as their responsibilities in the communications sector grows. [3556/24]
Amharc ar fhreagraThursday, 25 January 2024
Ceisteanna (92)
Freagraí ó Béal (6 píosaí cainte)
What plans does the Department have to support ComReg in its responsibility in the communications sector as this continues to grow? We know that regulation of the digital economy is very important and this sector is continuing to grow at pace. The responsibility around the telecoms sector with broadband rollout and ensuring that there is no monopoly present - all of these issues need to be dealt with. The issue of cyber security is also an aspect of the work that ComReg continues to take a larger role in, as that sector continues to be under more and more threat. What kind of investment are we going to see there? Will we see more employment for more people because clearly it needs more staff?
Given the importance of the electronic communications sector to both the economy and society, robust regulation of networks and services in a manner that enables investment, ensures operational resilience and trust and appropriate consumer protection requires a fit-for-purpose communications regulator.
Both my officials and I meet regularly with ComReg to discuss a range of policy and regulatory issues, including the timely and adequate resourcing, and indeed funding, of the regulator to enable it to deliver on its current and evolving statutory remit.
This remit includes legislating to ensure clarity around existing and additional functions and that relevant enforcement powers and consumer protections are in place. Transposition of the European Electronic Communications Code, EECC, last year saw ComReg designated as the competent authority for the purpose of enforcing the code. It provided new powers and measures for ComReg including a new civil enforcement regime and an updated criminal enforcement procedure and the power to set minimum quality of service standards for consumers. It allows ComReg to take interim measures where necessary and sets a higher penalty for the commission of indictable offences.
It also includes engaging with colleagues across Government to ensure a strategic approach to designating relevant competent authorities for a range of new functions emerging under numerous horizontal EU files. Many of these files and associated functions are often not directly electronic communications related, but include data, cyber security and network resilience in the context of critical infrastructure.
Finally, it involves ongoing engagement with my colleague, the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, on the timely sanctioning of the recruitment of additional staff and appropriate funding models for same.
I will continue to work with ComReg to ensure that it can deliver on its statutory remit which has a key role to play in shaping and enabling Ireland’s digital connectivity. More broadly, I will continue to engage with colleagues to ensure a strong, stable and coherent regulatory framework for digital, with highly capable and well-resourced regulators, which is recognised in Harnessing Digital, our national digital strategy, as an essential part of Ireland’s strategic offering.
We all recognise the vital role that ComReg plays in this. As the digital world continues to grow and expand, we need to recognise that its capability also needs to be expanded to match what needs to happen. Many of the general public are quite fearful and under the impression that our regulatory authorities are not up to match the level of criminal activity that we see going on - people being hacked, Internet scams and all the types of things which come into play to some extent in regard to this. I was looking at the growth in data storage both on fixed and mobile use. It has grown exponentially and is at almost 2 billion Gb at the moment. We must recognise that we need to have an organisation that is fit for purpose to be able to deliver on all of this. As the Minister of State mentioned, the continued advancement of legislation, particularly from the European Union as part of all of that, puts our communications regulator under considerable pressure and I am glad to hear the Minister of State say that he is having constant communications with ComReg and is seeking additional resources for it. When I met the regulator recently, it was very clear to me that additional resources will certainly be required.
I am glad to hear that the Deputy has taken the time to meet ComReg. It has 156 employees at the moment and has sanction for 177. ComReg came to my Department looking for an additional 55 employees. It was looking for specific increases in grades and salaries and so on, and that is under consideration at the moment. However, it does have sanction to move to 177.
The Deputy mentioned some of the important functions ComReg has. One of them is stopping the public from receiving scam texts and calls. I worked with the organisation and the network operators to introduce a number of changes to prevent this from happening. We have brought in six different measures. I will not outline them because they would be of use to the scammers themselves.
In addition, we have a new commissioner coming in. This is Helen Dixon, who was the Data Protection Commissioner. She will take up the position of commissioner. She will join Garett Blaney and Robert Mourik, who as I said, I work with closely. ComReg will have a new function under the Network and Information Security Directive for cyber security. It will be the competent authority for cyber security in a number of sectors and it needs to have staff to carry out that function.
The cyber security aspect of it is something we need to really focus on. As with the HSE in Ireland, when we look at other jurisdictions we see some of these hackers and criminal organisations target water distribution systems and electricity systems. We have had blackouts recently; my own electricity only came back yesterday so we understand what it is like when we have vital services like this under attack. Most of the systems are computerised and based on data. We need to have an efficient and effective force in place to ensure that we can protect the organisations and that there is oversight to ensure those protection mechanisms are in place. It has a hugely detrimental effect on the general public if we have these types of attacks because they involve huge disruptions not just to be economy but to people's lives in some cases. We only have to think of the effects on health systems where they have been attacked before in this regard. It is vital that ComReg gets the staff it requires to do this and as the Minister of State said, it is under consideration. I welcome that but I hope that the considerations do not take very long.
Communications networks are part of our critical infrastructure, of course. We can see that they are a target. The biggest target is the energy system, with communications probably second after that. We see the example of Vodafone Portugal being taken down for a number of days. This is the kind of thing we need to protect against. The function of ComReg will be to ensure that communications companies are carrying out all the tasks they need to protect themselves. The National Cyber Security Centre, NCSC, will continue to offer the kind of technical support and incident response that is required. Additionally, ComReg will also be involved in something much more directly with the public, which is making sure that telecoms companies are providing a customer charter. When a company does not live up to the charter, there will be an easy adjudication method to ensure that they do not have to go to court. People have suffered a lot with communications companies. I am not going to name any one large communications company, but people have had a lot of difficulty with communications companies offering an appalling level of customer service.
Under new European law, ComReg will be the authority that is on the customer's side. It is going to provide an easy mechanism for people to get restitution and, in some cases, automatic refunds where, for example, customers book broadband installations and the installer does not turn up or where customers are not getting the services for which they have paid.