National Cyber Security Centre 'absolutely' needs powers to deal with threats for Irish EU presidency

Mon, 25 May, 2026 - 01:00

Cormac O’Keeffe

Ireland’s cyber chief expects cyberattacks during the Irish EU presidency to focus on trying to cause "reputational" damage to the EU and the host nation.

Richard Browne says the “most pressing issues” will be around the three or four major presidency events, including meetings of the EU leaders and the wider European Political Community summit in November.

The director of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) says his agency “absolutely” needs powers contained in a bill, due to be published soon, to deal with some of the threats, including from increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) models.

But it is not clear if these powers — contained in the National Cyber Security Bill 2024 — will pass the Oireachtas and be enacted and commenced before the summer recess.

Major internal issues

Ireland assumes the stewardship of the EU Presidency on July 1 for six months until the end of December.

This will involve taking the political lead on a dizzying range of major internal issues – from security to budgets to competitiveness – but also international relationships with the US, China, Israel, and Ukraine.

In an interview with the Irish Examiner, Mr Browne also said:

The NCSC led a two-day national exercise this month simulating escalating cyberattacks on the telecommunication and technology sectors in Ireland during the EU presidency;
Ireland is taking part in an upcoming EU #CyberEurope exercise, which is simulating a large-scale cyber incident affecting the railway and maritime sectors;
He is “not surprised” at the impact of fuel protest blockades of key ports, adding that the NCSC conducted a major exercise at Dublin Port in 2024, which involved port bosses from Belfast, Cork, Foynes, and Rosslare as well as the NCSC UK;
Frontier AI models — that can autonomously identify, and attack, vulnerabilities in IT systems — are currently in the “hands of the good guys”, but he warned they soon will be in the hands of the “bad guys”.

Mr Browne said his agency has produced a EU presidency threat assessment, including a detailed analysis of cyber incidents to presidencies over the past 10 years.

“We are in a heightened environment now," he said.

"It’s also very likely we’ll have incidents that are nothing to do with the presidency, but we do expect to have incidents related to the presidency."

He said the “most pressing issues” are around three to four large-scale political events, where cybersecurity and security in general will be highest.

“We have significant European summits in Dublin and in Cork so, if you have a website that goes down and people can’t get their accreditation, that’s the kind of thing that could happen," he said.

“It’s not dramatic, nobody gets hurt, but it disrupts the presidency, so that’s where we are focusing our attention.”