No one has claimed responsibility yet for a cyber attack that crashed Government websites this morning.

A number of government websites were affected by a suspected cyber attack today.

It is thought hackers have overwhelmed the site with traffic from multiple sources.

The Central Statistics Office issued a statement to say government infrastructure had been subject to a DDoS attack.

One potential with DDoS attacks in the past has been the use of the initial attack as a smokescreen for more serious and targetted assault on a website.

Paul Hogan from tech firm Ward Solutions told Newstalk: "One thing that we have seen in the past is that sometimes organisations use these DDoS attacks as a type of smokescreen and in that case they're trying to mask a more targetted attack.

"Now I'm not suggesting that that is what is happening in this case but we have seen in the past that while an organisation is trying to recover from a DDoS attack that tha attackers are using a more targetted attack behind the scenes."

The affected websites seem to be back online now.

The National Lottery fell foul of a cyber attack earlier in the week.