Irish politicians deny Kremlin ties after ‘Cobalt’ espionage claims

Members of the Irish parliament are denying having any connections with the Kremlin after reports of a Russian asset among politicians in Dublin.

The story began with an report in the UK’s Sunday Times that detailed a Russian influence operation had captured an unnamed “agent of influence inside the Irish political establishment”, whom the paper nicknamed “Cobalt” and identified as male.

The story has left members of the Irish parliament, or Oireachtas, to deny that they are the alleged asset, whom the Sunday Times claimed may have been pressured via the gathering of compromising personal information, or “kompromat”, or via a honeypot operation.

The paper reported that Cobalt has been extensively investigated by Irish security services.

However, addressing the lower house on Thursday, Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister Micheál Martin denied having been alerted to any active Russian espionage operation in Irish politics during his time as Taoiseach between June 2020 and December 2022.

“I received security briefings, but I was never told, and never briefed, that there was a spy in the Oireachtas,” he said.

“There’s a more fundamental question to be asked which I’m going to ask as minister of defence, because as minister of defence, I’ve never received a security briefing saying there’s a spy in the Oireachtas. There may be, there may not be, but I’ve never been briefed.”

Several parliamentarians have taken the unusual step of ruling themselves out as the real Cobalt. One senator from Martin’s party, Timmy Dooley, told his colleagues in the chamber this week that they needed to do so for the sake of parliament’s reputation.

“I think its important in order to avoid any potential stain on this house, that members would voluntarily make a statement that they are not the subject of any investigation or that they have never been in the clutches of Russia. And before I sit down, I can declare that I am not such person.”

Neutral, but vulnerable

Aside from Cobalt’s identity, the question raised by the original report is why Russia would be targeting Ireland with espionage in the first place.

The two countries have long had less than cordial relations, and there is a history of Russian spies using Ireland as a base for operating within the EU. Plans to expand the Russian embassy in Dublin in 2018 were thrown out by the Irish government when it emerged they contained suspicious elements that could have housed spying facilities.

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Ireland has accepted tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees. The Irish government has strongly supported the Ukrainian war effort, and it has sent nearly €400 million in humanitarian aid in the last two-and-a-half years.

However, Ireland is not a part of NATO and has long maintained a policy of military neutrality, maintaining only a relatively small army whose principal role is to participate in multilateral peacekeeping missions.

Under domestic law, for the army to deploy more than 12 soldiers to a combat zone, it must seek a mandatory resolution from the United Nations Security Council, a formal decision from the Irish government, and the approval of the lower house of parliament.

Polling shows that the neutrality policy remains popular among the Irish electorate. However, domestic critics of the so-called “triple lock” argue that it essentially gives adversaries on the UN Security Council a veto over Irish military action — and that Ireland is essentially working on the assumption that its Western allies would come to its defence if necessary.