Ireland is ‘not immune’ to security threats, says McEntee, with this Government of Clowns in power, Ireland is a Sitting Duck, Russia and its Embassy Members are having a Right Laugh?

Updated / Monday, 7 Oct 2024 16:16

The Minister for Justice has said she has not been approached by Russia and she said that as a country and as elective representatives, “we all need to remain vigilant”.

Helen McEntee’s comments come after a report at the weekend that Russian intelligence allegedly recruited an Irish politician as an agent.

The Sunday Times reported that Russian intelligence used a “honeytrap” to recruit a politician as an agent during the Brexit talks, with one of the aims being to undermine relations between Britain, Ireland and the EU.

The paper also reported that while the Irish military and security services identified the potential agent, code-named Cobalt, they remain in the Oireachtas.

Speaking in Drogheda, Co Louth, Ms McEntee said: “We’re not immune to these kinds of threats. No matter how small a country you are, you feel we’re on the periphery, we’re not and so we need to make sure that we’re all vigilant.”

Ms McEntee said her job was to make sure that the gardaí and intelligence units have the appropriate laws and resources: “Anything that we need to be able to counter this type of threat.”

She said this work had been carried out for years and “we’re updating our laws and again making sure that gardaí have the investment that they require to be able to respond”.

Independent TD Cathal Berry said it would be naive to think that the 220 members of the Oireachtas are not being targeted by Russia.

The former Army Ranger said the Russian strategy is aimed at undermining trust in public institutions.

Meanwhile, speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín called on all political parties and Independent groupings in the Oireachtas to urgently carry out an audit to see if any elected representatives have left themselves exposed to undue influence through their actions.

Mr Tóibínsaid he was approached by a consultancy firm in 2017 and offered a five-star trip to visit Russia and meet President Vladimir Putin as part of a trade fair.

At the time he was a member of Sinn Féin.

He said that he passed the information about the invite to the international department of Sinn Féin and told them he was not interested, he said.

Mr Tóibín said his understanding was that no member of Sinn éein attended the event.

Speaking yesterday, the Taoiseach Simon Harris said he would not comment on matters of security.

“Other than to say more broadly, it shouldn’t come as any surprise to any of us that Russia seeks to influence public opinion, seeks to distort public opinion and is active in relation to that across the world and that Ireland is not immune from that,” he said.