Man arrested following protest at Albanian prime minister’s speech during international affairs think tank

A man has been arrested after a protest in Dublin that took place during an event hosting the Albanian prime minister.

A group of protesters had gathered at the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), where Edi Rama was speaking about the country’s “European journey”.

The group, largely composed of Albanians living in Ireland, said they were seeking more accountability from the Tirana government.

They said they wanted their government to listen to protesters in Albania and were urging the EU to tackle corruption in the country as it seeks membership of the bloc.

Members of the group said on Wednesday they had initially been allocated tickets through a publicly available part of the IIEA website, and had intended to attend the meeting and put questions to Rama.

However, they said the IIEA then cancelled the tickets, telling them it was a members-only event.

When some of the group tried to join the IIEA, they were told the institute would not be in a position to process their membership before the event.

Enida Friel, one of the group who had her ticket cancelled and turned up to protest, said: “What the EU did for Ireland, we want the same for Albania. Our intentions are positive.”

She said the group of Albanians had not sought to disrupt the event, but rather wanted to ask questions of Rama.

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The Albanian leader was heckled on arrival, and at least one egg was thrown in his direction. There was a Garda presence on North Great George’s Street at the time.

The Garda confirmed it had responded to a public order incident at approximately 12.30pm. “A man, aged in his 50s, who was arrested has since been released without charge,” it said.

A spokeswoman for the IIEA said its events were for members only unless otherwise stated, and that an invitation to the event had been issued to members with a link to a registration page on its website – but the event had not been promoted publicly by the IIEA.

“When it became clear a number of non-members had registered, we contacted them and advised them they could not attend the event. We do this regularly to ensure the value of our membership,” she said.

She said the attendee list was not shared with the Albanian representatives or elsewhere.

“We sincerely regret any confusion caused and as a gesture of goodwill, we offered each of the individuals the option of attending the event online, where they would be able to ask questions through the chat function,” she said.

“We were very happy to facilitate this and the moderator put questions from both those in the room and online to the speaker.”