Enlarge / St. Vincent's University Hospital in Dublin, Ireland. (credit: Bloomberg | Getty Images)

Ireland has shut down most of the major IT systems running its national healthcare service, leaving doctors unable to access patient records and people unsure of whether they should show up for appointments, following a “very sophisticated” ransomware attack.

Paul Reid, chief executive of Ireland’s Health Service Executive, told a morning radio show that the decision to shut down the systems was a “precautionary” measure after a cyber attack that impacted national and local systems “involved in all of our core services.”

Some elements of the Irish health service remain operational, such as clinical systems and its Covid-19 vaccination program, which is powered by separate infrastructure. Covid tests already booked are also going ahead.

Enlarge / Facebook's European headquarters in Dublin. (credit: Brian Lawless - PA Images / Getty)

Facebook has warned that it could be forced to pull out of the European market if European regulators push forward with limits on data sharing between the European Union and the United States.

Until this year, an arrangement called Privacy Shield allowed US technology companies to move data easily between the two jurisdictions. But Europe's highest court nixed that arrangement in July, arguing that US law lacks robust protections against surveillance by the US government.

In the wake of that ruling, Ireland's privacy regulator ordered Facebook to stop sending data on European users to its US data centers. Ireland's Data Protection Commission (DPC) leads enforcement of European privacy regulations with respect to Facebook because Facebook's official European headquarters is in Dublin.