Patient records stolen during the HSE cyber attack could begin appearing online today.

The hackers behind the attack last week threatened to publish the data if no ransom was paid by today.

The Government has repeatedly ruled out making any payment.

Officials are working to rebuild the network and a number of hospitals regained access to their radiology and lab systems over the weekend.

Officials are still working on getting systems, including those that support scans, labs and patient administration on a national scale, back up and running.

The HSE Chief Paul Reid said it will be a matter of weeks rather than days.

“We have validated the decryption keys we were given,” he said

“We have replicated them to a much safer version. We are deploying them across the network to try and unlock some of the information.

“So, we are making progress. It is slow and will continue to be slow. We are beginning to be able to bring up some national systems and some hospitals but all of them won’t be up.

“It will be a period of weeks rather than days.”

He said the attack has had little effect on the national vaccine rollout.

“We have managed to keep the vaccination programme going really strong and at pace,” he said.

“Over the course of last week, we would have almost 300,000 vaccine administered. Vaccine centres are doing, on average, 30,000 appointments per day.

“Obviously, we don’t have the GP data in because of that system being down but very strong progress and will be again this week.”

The Communications Minister is warning anyone approached by people claiming to have their information to contact Gardaí immediately.

“Go to your local station,” he said.

“Give them your details. They will be prepared to take the information; they will know what to do with it and that rather than sharing it, particularly online, particularly on social media, is the best approach.”

He said notifying Gardaí will allow officials build up a clear picture of what information may or may not have been released.