Irish Ambassador to the Russian Federation, Adrian McDaid
By Irish Echo Staff
Ireland expelled a Russian diplomat in response to the poisoning of an exchanged Russian spy and his daughter in England.
The Russians have responded by expelling an Irish diplomat from Moscow.
Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said that it had been informed that the accreditation of a member of staff with diplomatic status in the Embassy of Ireland in Moscow was to be terminated.
Ireland’s ambassador to the Russian Federation met with a senior official from the Foreign Ministry and was told that the diplomat in question would be required to leave the jurisdiction.
The Irish response?
“There is no justification for the expulsion of an Irish diplomat from Russia. Irish Embassy staff do not engage in activities which are incompatible with their diplomatic status, nor has Ireland acted improperly. The decision to expel an Irish diplomat is regrettable,” said an Irish government statement.
Ireland had rowed in behind the United Kingdom, the United States, a range of European Union countries, and some non-EU members after the poison attack in Salisbury which has been widely linked to Moscow, which bears something of a dubious record when it comes to dispatching alleged enemies of the state living in exile.
Irish foreign minister, Simon Coveney, said that “in the wake of these truly shocking events” it was essential that all EU member states stood “in unqualified solidarity with the United Kingdom.”
Coveney stated that following an urgent assessment conducted by the security services and relevant departments, chaired by the secretary general of his own department, he had briefed the cabinet on his intended course of action.
“Following that briefing, the secretary general met the Russian ambassador, Yuriy Filatov, and informed him that the accreditation of a member of his staff with diplomatic status is to be terminated, in line with the provisions of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.
“The individual in question is required to leave the jurisdiction within a short specified timeframe.”
Moscow duly responded with its expulsion of the Irish diplomat.
That retaliatory move would have been initially relayed to Ireland’s ambassador in the Russian capital, Adrian McDaid.
McDaid, who has previously served at the Irish Embassy in Washington and at the Irish Consulate in New York, took up his Moscow post September, 2015.
He formally presented his credentials as Irish Ambassador to the Russian Federation to President Putin at the Great Kremlin Palace on November 26 of that year.
Ambassador McDaid had previously served as consul at the Irish Embassy in Moscow in the 1980s.
