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Ireland’s assumption of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in July has laid bare for the whole world to see the embarrassing security dilemma caused by the country’s underinvestment. Consider for instance Ireland’s absence of naval defence capacities despite ranking among European Union member states like France, Denmark, and Portugal for having some of the largest marine territories in the bloc.
For the duration of the Irish Council Presidency, British and French naval vessels have been tasked with defending the country as it hosts European leaders and senior civil servants. However, Ireland’s characteristically bizarre defence arrangements, the Attorney General has advised that Article 15 of Bunreacht na hÉireann, the Irish constitution, the Oireachtas alone reserves the authority to raise a military force within the boundaries of the State. As such, the British and French vessels tasked with defending Ireland for the Council Presidency are not permitted to enter Irish waters. To reiterate the arcane legal workarounds constructed to plug the gaps in the State’s defence strategy, a method for avoiding the constitutional question if a foreign vessel were to use lethal force to defend Irish territory was constructed. Put into practice on day one of the Irish Council Presidency, an Irish naval officer was stationed aboard a French frigate, the Aquitaine, so that in the event of missile fire against a hostile actor the order would technically be delivered by an authorised Irish individual.
To demonstrate the unpreparedness for Ireland’s Council Presidency and how domestic criticisms have mounted, the government is set to spend more than €293 million on six months in the chair, of which two months are lost due to the summer and Christmas holiday seasons. Of that budget, the largest single identifiable component has been allocated to security. Some €125 million was allocated to An Garda Siochana for additional costs in policing the Irish Council Presidency. Knowing Ireland’s history with cost overruns and wasteful public spendings, the real figure once the Presidency is finished is anticipated to be much higher.
However the budgeting for the Presidency has exposed an irony in government policy. The State has proved that it can find €125 million to police a diplomatic calendar for four months of the year, and yet it cannot find the money to properly police the country ordinarily. Garda strength stands over 14,500, with the Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly hoping to reach 15,000 by year’s end. Yet the policing services retain a longstanding recruitment issue that resolution appears far out of reach. Recruitment to the Garda Reserve last year reached less than 10 percent of the planned intake. These are not the figures of a temporary staffing problem, they describe a serious retention and recruitment crisis which successive ministers have failed to amend. So, when it comes to policing the Presidency, the Irish government has resorted to the same tactic employed when the President of the United States visits the country — flood the Gardai with a funding windfall to stave off international embarrassment at the lack of public security on Irish streets.
The funding of the Irish Defence Forces is even worse. Indicative of the fact that the government realises this is a problem, defence spending for 2026 has reached a record €1.5 billion. However, when measured against the continent, it is roughly 0.2 percent of GDP at a moment when the EU average has reached 2.2 per cent and is heading towards 2.4. Ireland is not merely behind on the European trend, it is continually lagging with no sight in a substantive move, though the government promises it will reach €3 billion at an undefined point in the future.
The Permanent Defence Force numbers tell a similar story of languishing defence and securit investments, with about 7,700 active personnel against an establishment force of around 9,700. Furthermore, Ireland has no ground-based air defence of consequence. Unidentified aircraft in Irish-controlled airspace are intercepted by the Royal Air Force under a secret agreement that has never been published or debated formally. Counter-drone capability has been promised for delivery by the government, but only after four large military drones entered Irish air space on the evening of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy’s arrival in Dublin.
This accumulation of security crises prompted Irish analyst Eoin Drea to argue in Foreign Policy that Ireland is becoming a de facto French military protectorate: a state whose air, sea and subsea security is increasingly underwritten by partners it has no formal obligation to, and no formal say over. Meanwhile Irish General Seán Clancy, former Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces, has chaired the European Union Military Committee since 2024, the most senior military post in the bloc. That appointment in of itself demonstrates that Dublin is conscious of military coordination at the European Union level, but it is ultimately nothing more than symbolism when the country actively neglects its domestic military and policing obligations.
The repeal of the triple lock on the overseas deployment of the Defence Forces now sits awkwardly on top of all this. The requirement for a United Nations Security Council mandate before deploying more than twelve personnel abroad was sold as a guarantee of Irish independence, neutrality, and commitment to multilateral institutions. In practice it hands a veto over Irish deployments to Moscow and Beijing, two states which have political and economic interests which diverge and conflict with Irish national interests. Now the consequences of that policy have come home to roost, with the United Nations Security Council now winding down the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. When that mission closes Ireland will have no major overseas unit deployment and lose its only overseas active training zones for the Defence Forces to build technical military expertise through peacekeeping operations. With the divisions in the Security Council, the return of UNIFIL looks to be almost impossible, and so it is within this context that the government is moving towards repealing the triple lock.
There is a coherent sovereigntist case for the removal of the triple lock. Irish soldiers should be deployed by Dail Eireann and the Republic of Ireland alone. The issue is not the principle, but the low public trust in the current government which undermines confidence that the Cabinet are acting in good faith. The amendment to remove the triple lock has subsequently stalled after its approval by Cabinet precisely because Fianna Fáil backbenchers objected to what they believed constituted a fundamental change to the party’s principles. And without a credible plan to sell this reform to the Irish public and guarantee that the government will not quietly slide Ireland into European Union defence agreements, it will never see the light of day.
That is the ultimate dilemma that the Irish Council Presidency has exposed. A deeply unpopular government presiding over a cascading series of crises attempting to remilitarise and repeal multilateral checks on Irish security policy could only ever naturally be viewed with scepticism and concern. Neutrality without military capability is not independence, but helplessness, and with the ongoing war in Ukraine among other global conflicts, military spending will be publicly unpopular for the sole reason that the government has not once done its job to guarantee the public that their interests will be defended over those of the foreign governments and companies whose orbit the Irish establishment has slowly drifted towards.