Minister Alan Kelly has told Newstalk Lunchtime that he has called for a meeting with the head of Volkswagen following the emission scandal over the last few weeks.
The scandal rocked the automotive industry when it was discovered that tests on the cars from the US showed five to 30 times the emission levels that they had expected.
Minister Kelly stated: "It's an absolute disgrace.
"I've written to the MD of Volkswagen Ireland to meet him urgently. This story is only breaking, we don't really fully know what the potential or if there are other issues here but certainly it's an issue that's going to have to be dealt with at a European-wide level."
You can listen to his interview here:
Meanwhile, the R&D chiefs working with its core passenger car division, luxury brand Audi and sports car maker Porsche are reported to have been put on leave, although all three companies declined to comment.
Audi says 2.1m of its cars were fitted with emission cheating software, as Volkswagen is said to have suspended the research and development heads of three divisions.
The firm has been at the centre of a controversy concerning the levels of emissions produced by some of their cars.
According to the Audi spokesman, around 1.42 million Audi vehicles in Western Europe are fitted with the device, with 577,000 in Germany.
Another 13,000 Audi cars in the US are affected.
Vehicle lines involved include the Audi A1, A3, A4, A5, A6 and the TT, Q3 and Q5 models.
Volkswagen was forced to apologise last week when it was discovered that it had installed a "cheat device" in some of its cars in order to trick emission tests in the US.
The devices were able to detect when cars were undergoing tests, and would switch the vehicle to a low emission mode in order to achieve more favourable results.
This means that many people bought cars which were much less environmentally friendly than they had been led to believe.
Then CEO of the Volkswagen Group, Martin Winterkorn, was forced to resign over the revelations and was replaced by Matthias Müller, who had been the chief of Volkswagen subsidiary Porsche since 2010.
Bonds
The European Central Bank has suspended buying bundles of loans backed by Volkswagen assets as it reviews the implications of the ongoing scandal at the German car manufacturing group.
The sharp fall in the Volkswagen share price over the past week – almost one third, from 140 cent to 107 cent - has prompted the review.
The move could signal serious difficulties for Volkswagen seeking to raise debt finance at competitive rates on international bond markets.
Earlier this year it could raise long-term finance at rates as low as 0.7% , now the yield or interest rate has risen to 2.3% and may continue to rise depending on the ECB decisions
Meanwhile, reports from Germany suggest that some senior management at Volkswagen may have known about issues relating to the software product, produced by Bosch, that was used to distort emission-testing results.
