Ireland’s the ultimate defense freeloader

Eoin Drea is senior research officer at the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies.

Despite war raging in Ukraine and countries like North Macedonia, Georgia and Moldova desperately seeking to join the EU, there’s one member country that won’t be helping to rush to defend Europe anytime soon.

That country is Ireland.

Despite bearing responsibility for 16 percent of the EU’s territorial waters, and the fact that 75 percent of transatlantic undersea cables pass through or near Irish waters, Ireland is totally defenseless. And I mean completely unable to protect critical infrastructure, or even pretend to secure its own borders.

Think I’m exaggerating?

Well, Ireland’s “navy” of six patrol vessels is currently operating with one operational ship due to chronic staff shortages. Over one month of naval patrol days were cancelled in the 12 months prior to March 2024 due to staffing shortages. Pay and conditions are so bad that entire classes of Naval Service graduates are being bought out of their contracts by private employers seeking their technical skills.

Ireland simply has no undersea capabilities. How could it, when it barely spends 0.2 percent of GDP on security and defense? And it has, in effect, abdicated responsibility for protecting the Europe’s northwestern borders.

Things are so embarrassing that when Russian navy ships conducted drills near Irish waters three weeks before their invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it was a fleet of Irish commercial fisherman who confronted them. And more recently, an upsurge of drug trafficking activity linked to Mexican organized crime forced current lawmaker (and former senior Irish army officer) Cathal Berry to warn that “(Ireland has) handed the keys of the country over to the cartels.”

Unfortunately, things are even worse up in the skies. Ireland has no combat jets, and it’s the only country in Europe that can’t monitor its own airspace due to the lack of primary radar systems. The absence of combat or heavy airlift planes has left the Irish begging other European air forces for help in emergencies — most recently during the evacuation of Western personnel from Afghanistan.

Instead, the country has outsourced its security to Britain in a technically secret agreement between Dublin and London, which effectively cedes control over Irish air space to the Royal Air Force.

This must be the luck of the Irish — smile and get someone else to protect you for free.

Unfortunately, so entrenched are the country’s policymakers in their formula for defenseless neutrality that no major shift in policy is possible.

Officially, the Irish government is directing attention toward its “Report of the Commission on the Defence Forces” published in early 2022, which — they say — will transform Irish capabilities. Unfortunately, however, Irish defense spending continued its decline through 2023, with modest increases significantly below the rate of inflation. And the only planned upgrade before 2028 is the acquisition of a basic primary radar system — all other weaknesses are blisfully ignored.

The country has outsourced its security to Britain in a technically secret agreement between Dublin and London, which effectively cedes control over Irish air space to the Royal Air Force. | Ministry of Defence via Getty Images

Meanwhile, Dublin’s decision to attend this year’s Munich Security Conference and extol the virtues of neutrality demonstrates just how out of touch the country has become. This inevitable car crash of a discussion highlighted how Ireland’s painfully patronizing brand of best-in-class humanitarianism is no longer taken seriously beyond the Irish Sea.

Ironically, it’s Ireland’s membership in the single market and penchant for “tax competition” that’s given Dublin ample fiscal space to invest more in security and defense — if desired. Its booming business tax receipts, driven exclusively by U.S. tech and pharma companies, are expected to deliver budget surpluses of approximately €50 billion by 2027. Alas, security and defense spending don’t even enter into the conversation of how this money is to be spent.

Ultimately, Ireland’s policies underscore the fact that Dublin feels no responsibility to protect its own borders, regardless of the potential impact on its fellow EU members — a view that reflects its broader transactional approach to EU affairs, which is predicated on safeguarding existing relationships with the U.S. (corporate tax) and the U.K. (open border with Northern Ireland).

European solidarity only brings up the rear.

Plus, Ireland’s approach to the next round of EU budget negotiations promises to be more of the same old, same old — more money (Ireland’s a net contributor) in return for maintaining the flow of business tax returns. Somehow, Ireland, which was bailed out in 2010, is still trying (unsuccessfully) to run with the frugal gang when it comes to hard cash.

Pay a little, receive an awful lot more seems the current Irish mantra.

And most depressingly of all, not even a direct Russian attack on the Baltic states, Finland or Poland may convince Ireland to lift a finger — or reach for its checkbook — to help defend Europe. As part of a successful strategy to convince the country to ratify the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, the EU agreed to an additional Protocol, providing Dublin with an escape clause for any European defense responsibilities.

So, while the EU — including even Germany — stumbles forward on security and defense, Ireland remains aloof on its island oasis.

Two things are certain: Ukraine will keep fighting; Ireland will keep freeloading.