Ireland is mounting its biggest ever security operation after a wave of bomb threats
10 hours ago · 7 November 2026Share
Convention Centre, Dublin, Ireland. File photo. Zairon · CC BY 4.0
Bomb threats just hit European airlines. Now they're hitting Irish media. And Dublin is about to host the biggest gathering of European leaders the country has ever seen.
The emails landed a day ago. They went to media organisations across Ireland and Britain. RTÉ, Bauer Media, Virgin Media and Mediahuis were all targeted.
Staff at RTÉ were evacuated. Presenter David McCullagh told listeners, live on air, that the email warned a bomb would go off in 45 minutes.
A senior RTÉ figure, who didn't want to be named, says the threat actually went to 18 media organisations in total.
But here's the thing. It wasn't just Ireland.
The Irish Times reports the same message, or something very close to it, landed in between 50 and 60 inboxes right across Europe. Garda figures called it crude. Generic. Nothing in it singled out Irish media specifically.
The email was signed by someone calling himself Mikhail Andropov. Headlined "Message to the West", according to reports of the email. It said a new wave of attacks was coming.
And this isn't a one-off.
More than 50 aviation threats have hit Europe since 2 November. At least 18 flights and airports were disrupted in a single day this week alone. This same week, cyberattacks hit supermarket refrigeration systems and blood banks in several European countries too.
Micheál Martin, Ireland's Taoiseach, says quote "very serious". He says it looks like a coordinated campaign of disruption. He says nobody knows yet who's behind it. He says he'll find out and bring them to justice.
So why now? Why Ireland?
Next week, Dublin hosts the European Political Community summit. That's on the Thursday. Then a meeting of EU heads of state or government the day after. Both at the Convention Centre.
Between 50 and 55 heads of state and senior officials are expected, depending which report you read. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine's President, is among them, though his attendance isn't confirmed yet.
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Contains modified NASA/ISS data showing view of Dublin from earth orbit. File photo. NASA/Expedition 53 · Public domain
Ireland is calling this the country's biggest ever security operation. Bigger, Micheál Martin says, than the policing mounted for a sitting US president's visit.
An Garda Síochána has hired coaches. Cost so far: at least €2 million. That's just to bring officers into Dublin for the summit days. Gardaí will be sent into Dublin and Shannon Airport, which is acting as a backup transport hub, across the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of summit week.
Jim O'Callaghan, Ireland's Minister for Justice, says the threats against Irish media are being taken seriously. They're under investigation.
And there's strain inside the operation itself.
The Garda Representative Association speaks for more than 11,000 rank-and-file officers. Talks with Garda management broke down. So they're pressing ahead with a work-to-rule during summit week. A separate group, the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors, says it will police the summits as planned anyway — even though it's still critical of how Garda management has handled things.
Ireland's national threat level is still classed as moderate. But around the summit itself, the threat is rated substantial. One level below the very top.
Nobody has claimed responsibility. No state has been named.
According to Irish Times reporting, Russia, or a Russian-aligned actor, hasn't been ruled out. The Institute for the Study of War says European states haven't pinned this on anyone specific yet, but the pattern looks like the kind of hybrid campaign Russia has run before.
Separately, two European ministers have reached the same conclusion on their own. Spain's Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares and Italy's Defence Minister Guido Crosetto have each independently called this wave of threats coordinated.
Kevin Bakhurst, RTÉ's Director General, says quote "a lot of disruption". But he says the broadcaster's contingency plans, checked recently, held up.
So here's what we don't know. Who sent the emails. Whether the threat to the summit is actually credible, or just designed to cause chaos. And whether more than 50 heads of state will show up next week exactly as planned.
For now, Ireland is preparing like it will happen anyway. With the biggest security operation the state has ever put together.
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