DUBLIN (The Thursday Times) — Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTÉ, and other media organisations evacuated staff on Friday after an emailed bomb threat, in what the Irish government said was likely a co-ordinated campaign of disruption following similar hoaxes against flights across Europe.
The email reached RTÉ and other outlets in Ireland and Britain at about 8.33am, RTÉ’s director general, Kevin Bakhurst, said. Staff left the buildings on the broadcaster’s Donnybrook campus in Dublin while police searched them with sniffer dogs, and the site was later declared safe. RTÉ switched to pre-recorded programmes for a time as a precaution.
Independent News Media briefly evacuated its offices on Talbot Street in Dublin after the Irish Independent received what a spokesperson for its owner, Mediahuis Ireland, called “threatening correspondence”. Virgin Media Television said it received the same email, which had been “widely circulated to multiple European media platforms”, but stayed on air and did not evacuate.
“The threats made this morning against media organisations here are very serious,” the Government of Ireland said in a statement. “Hoax threats such as these cause fear, distress and disruption to people going about their daily lives and activities; they achieve no positive purpose whatsoever.”
The government said it was not yet known who was behind the threats, “whether it is individuals or a centralised or co-ordinated effort”, but that they came “on the heels of the ongoing disruption to aviation around Europe caused by similar threats”. The email purportedly came from those behind hoax bomb threats that hit at least 27 flights across Europe on Thursday, including some Aer Lingus and Ryanair services, after earlier alerts this week.
Ireland’s police, the Gardaí, are working with the Defence Forces and the country’s cyber and aviation authorities to find those responsible, and are in contact with their European security counterparts, the government said. It added that police had been alert to the risk of such threats while planning events for Ireland’s presidency of the Council of the European Union.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin called the threats “worrying” and said the government would “go after” those responsible. Bakhurst called the hoax “a disgraceful attack on the media, on free media”.
