DUBLIN, Nov 6 (Reuters) – The offices of Irish media groups including national broadcaster RTE were evacuated following bomb threats on Friday that a presenter on one of the impacted radio stations, Newstalk, said had been deemed a hoax.
Newstalk resumed programming at 1000 GMT after staff were told they could return to the building in central Dublin, presenter Claire Byrne said on air. The Irish Independent newspaper group reported that its offices in the capital had also been evacuated.
A reporter for RTE radio said after news programming went back on air from an outside broadcasting unit that a threat was sent to the broadcaster by email shortly before 0900 GMT that a bomb was going to go off within 45 minutes.
The presenter of RTE Radio One’s mid morning news show said he understood that the email was purported to be from the same people behind hoax bomb threats that disrupted dozens of passenger flights across Europe on Thursday.
“It is worrying, and we take the threat seriously,” Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said in a telephone interview with RTE shortly after the more than one hour interruption to its programming ended.
“It just illustrates how relatively simple it can be to cause disruption and to undermine the normal operation of society through unconventional activities of this kind, which are designed to cause disruption, designed to cause fear and anxiety. We have to remain calm and very focused on this.”
RTE’s campus in south Dublin remained closed while police checked it building by building, the reporter said.
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin, editing by Sam Tabahriti and Sarah Young)
