The Minister for European Affairs has said that what Russia was doing was “absolutely outrageous” following an attempted drone attack in Leipzig in Germany last month.
Allies rallied around Germany after it blamed the incident at Leipzig/Halle airport on Russia.
Yesterday, the Department of Foreign Affairs summoned the Russian ambassador in response to the attempted attack.
In a statement, the Russian Embassy said the Irish side “repeated insinuations by the German government” regarding the alleged attempted drone attack.
It said Ambassador Yuriy Filatov “categorically rejected allegations of a Russian connection to the incident”, adding that any claims of Russian involvement in any hybrid activities in Europe are “absolutely unfounded and misplaced”.
Minister Thomas Byrne said that his sympathy and empathy went to the Ukrainian people, and that he paid no attention to what Mr Filatov said. “Neither does anybody here in Ireland,” he said.
He was speaking at Dublin Castle where an informal meeting of European Affairs ministers is taking place as part of Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
Separately, the minister said that Ireland was getting on with the work of enlargement of the European Union.
Mr Byrne said that the country was working hard on helping Ukraine and Moldova to open the remaining negotiating chapters to their cases.
As regards the accession of Montenegro, the minister said a treaty was being negotiated and this would include safeguards which, he said, was a key part of accession to the EU.
When asked about how to make joining the EU more attractive to countries like Iceland – which recently voted not to reopen membership talks – Mr Byrne said this was a very specific issue.
“Icelandic people voted the way they did, what can we do? They made the decision.”
He said Iceland made their decision around fishing issues, rather than a broader problem.