Taoiseach: Revelations Irish politician allegedly recruited by Russian spy should come as no surprise to anyone

Revelations that an Irish politician was allegedly recruited by a Russian spy should come as no surprise to anyone, Taoiseach Simon Harris has said.

The Fine Gael leader made the comments after reports emerged that Russian Intelligence allegedly recruited an Oireachtas member as an agent.

Described as one of the state’s most closely guarded secrets, the politician, who has been given the codename Cobalt, was allegedly recruited by a Russian diplomat who was also acting as a spymaster.

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It is believed Russian intelligence used a “honeytrap” to recruit the politician as an agent during the Brexit talks, with one of the aims being to undermine relations between Britain, Ireland and the EU. The agent is alleged to have met with former diplomat Sergey Prokopiev, who was expelled from this country by the Department of Foreign Affairs.

According to the Sunday Times, the pair met outside of Dublin - and were monitored by security forces. Prokopiev is believed to have headed Russian intelligence operations in this country before being kicked out of Ireland.

Agent Cobalt was approached by Garda special branch officers and formally warned that he was being targeted by the Russians. But his dismissal of those concerns strengthened their suspicions that he was an actual agent working for the Kremlin.

While Agent Cobalt can't be arrested, as he has committed no crime, he was still being monitored by the Irish security services. It is believed that the politician’s bank accounts were checked but there was no evidence of payments being made to him.

The Sunday Times reported that the Russians at one stage used a ­“honeypot” — a striking-looking female agent — to entangle the politician romantically, thus compromising him further and encouraging him to cooperate. The female agent was monitored entering the state on multiple occasions for short periods of time before leaving again, but no action could be taken as Cobalt was not breaking any law.

As well as the Gardaí’s special branch section, Irish Army Intelligence, known as J2, were involved in monitoring agent Cobalt. The Taoiseach said on Sunday that Russian activity in Ireland should come as no surprise to anyone but could not comment on an individual case.

He said: “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. We’ve also seen a very significant increase in that level of activity since the brutal invasion by Russia of Ukraine.

“Gardaí and our security services take all of these issues extremely seriously and monitor these issues seriously, and work with international counterparts on all these matters, and I have great confidence in the ability of Gardaí, working with international counterparts.”

When asked if he knew who agent Cobalt is he said he could not comment on such security matters.

“We never comment on this kind of thing. I’m not sure if any country does comment in relation to security matters. But I can tell you that as Taoiseach I am satisfied that our Gardaí and our intelligence services working internationally with counterparts take this issue very, very seriously.”

When asked if it was not in the public interest to know if one of their elected representatives is a Russian spy, the Taoiseach said national security was paramount.

He said: “Not commenting is not giving a view one way or the other. It's saying that we don't ever put information in relation to national security into the public domain. That's not to say that these matters aren't taken extraordinarily seriously.”

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