A REVIEW of the Irish passport system’s security is to be carried out, said Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin, following the use of a false Irish passport by one of the 11 people arrested in the US at the weekend on suspicion of spying.
Mr Martin said that although it was too early to determine how the Irish passport made its way into the hands of one of those arrested, the system’s security and technology would be looked at.
“The technology we now have in place in terms of the Irish passport system is of a very high specification,” he said. “But you will know from listening to people in the technology world and elsewhere, the capacity of certain organisations out there to almost penetrate any technology is well known.
“So this isn’t just a challenge to the Irish Government, it is a challenge to all democratic governments and I want to get to the bottom of this before I make any definitive comments.
“But we will obviously review, in the light of any information we receive, the situation pertaining to the security of our own technology and passport system.”
Mr Martin said he deplored the fraudulent use of Irish passports, as it put Irish citizens at risk and undermined the integrity of the country’s passport system.
“We are awaiting further reports from the various authorities in the US before we can make a definitive conclusion in relation to this particular assertion or allegations, or reports that are in the media. So until we have more detailed engagement with all the various actors here, I don’t think I can comment any further but I think my position on the overall issue of fraudulent use of passports is well known,” he said.
The Minister was speaking at the Ugandan ministry of finance in Kampala on the final day of a three-day visit to Uganda.
Mr Martin made a visit to the Irish-funded Moroto High School in Karmajo on Tuesday, the first secondary school in the remote northeast of the country.
Yesterday, he signed a memorandum of understanding between Ireland and Uganda at the ministry. It committed a further €166 million in development assistance to the east African country over the next five years.
Mr Martin met Ugandan prime minister Apolo Nsibambi to discuss the involvement of Irish businesses, NGOs, gardaí and defence forces in the country.
Anglo-Irish company Tullow Oil is one of the biggest investors in Uganda’s burgeoning oil industry, while members of An Garda Síochána and the PSNI are training Uganda’s police force in public order management and community policing.
Meanwhile, five soldiers from the Irish Army are part of an EU force training 2,000 Somali government soldiers in Uganda, as part of an effort to strengthen the transitional federal government’s ability to fight Islamist insurgents. The recruits are being trained in Bihanga in the west of Uganda to become noncommissioned officers.
“It is very challenging but very rewarding work” said Comdt Ronan Corcoran, protocol officer at EU Training Mission Somalia. Giving orders in English, which then had to be translated by a Kenyan colleague into Somali Arabic, was one of the biggest difficulties faced by the training force, he said.
However, Irish soldiers had to jump over their own linguistic hurdles from time to time to get their own message across: “Of the five Irish guys, two of them are from Cork,” said the Kerryman.
“So their English isn’t up to scratch either.”
- Cypriot police said yesterday they were looking for Christopher Robert Metsos (54), one of the alleged Russian spies who was arrested at Larnaca airport on Tuesday as he tried to board a flight for Budapest, Hungary, but vanished after being released on bail.