RTÉ Radio 1 and Newstalk interrupted live programmes on Friday morning after bomb threats forced staff to evacuate their Dublin buildings.
RTÉ’s Donnybrook campus was cleared after a threatening email was received, with Gardaí attending the site and searching the buildings. Staff at Bauer Audio Ireland and Newstalk were also forced to evacuate Marconi House in Dublin.
On RTÉ Radio 1, Morning Ireland was interrupted after 9am and the station switched to pre-recorded programmes while the security response continued. Live broadcasting later resumed from the Roadcaster mobile studio.
Once back on air, presenter David McCullagh spoke by phone to Taoiseach Micheál Martin about the incident. At the end of their conversation, David delivered a verbal “up yours” to whoever had made the threat. He also spoke with lyric fm presenter Marty Whelan and a studio producer about what had happened.
Newstalk had been reporting on the evacuation at Donnybrook before its own building was affected. Reporter Barry Whyte told The Claire Byrne Show that the RTÉ campus had been evacuated in the previous 10 to 15 minutes “because they’ve received a bomb threat”.
Presenter Claire Byrne then informed listeners that she too would have to go off air, followed by a minute of dead air.
In a statement, Gardaí said they were “liaising with the Irish media organisations, and the threats will be investigated.”
The evacuations followed a series of hoax bomb threats reported across Europe in recent weeks. At the time of the initial reports, it had not been established whether Friday’s threats to the broadcasters were hoaxes or connected to those earlier incidents.
