Ireland ‘is Europe’s weak spot’ due to its lack of military spending and ‘an open goal in Russia’s crosshairs’ if Putin looks to attack the EU without provoking NATO, experts warn

During a debate on a Defence Bill in May 2024, the now-President of Ireland controversially declared: ‘Ireland will never be able to have an army. We do not need an army.’

A year later, after a landslide election, Catherine Connolly finds herself the supreme commander of the Irish Defence Forces, encompassing the Air Corps, the Naval Service and, by definition, the Army. 

The comments of the Left-wing former barrister chime jarringly with the realities of today, where militarising NATO countries have sounded the alarm about the threat of World War Three because of an increasingly aggressive Moscow.

While Ireland has the luxury of being one of the European countries furthest from the fighting in Ukraine and the recent string of suspicious drone incursions, it is far from immune from the hybrid threats posed by the Kremlin.

In November 2024, Moscow’s military spy ship Yantar travelled from Russia’s Kola Peninsula to Norway, down the English Channel and up into the Irish Sea, where it was seen operating drones in an area containing subsea energy and internet infrastructure.

The spy ship, operated by GUGI, Russia’s secretive directorate of deep-sea research, has long been suspected of secretly mapping Ireland’s vast underwater network of cables, where billions of dollars of financial transactions are transferred.

The Yantar which attacked Royal Air Force aircraft with lasers two weeks ago was also revealed to be on course for Irish-controlled waters, when it was spotted skulking around the Scottish coast.

But with its unshakeable commitment to military neutrality that has lasted over a century, Ireland is unwilling – and now dramatically ill-equipped – to defend its underwater cables, that by some estimates carry more than a quarter of transatlantic data every day.

For military experts, it is not just financial markets that are at stake if Ireland doesn’t start to take defence seriously, but European security itself – with one former British Army Colonel branding the nation an ‘open goal’ for Vladimir Putin.

The country’s proud commitment to neutrality dates as far back as 1922, when the Anglo-Irish Treaty founding the Irish State allowed for a small navy, fishery and revenue patrols, and a modestly-sized army.

Since then, Ireland remained neutral in World War Two and refused to join NATO in 1949 because of discomfort about military cooperation with its former colonial ruler while the two countries disputed the constitutional status of Northern Ireland.

Neutrality is built into its modern identity, but according to Hamish de Bretton-Gordon OBE, a former British Army Colonel, the country’s reticence to militarise is a ticking timebomb for European security. 

‘Ireland has nothing to protect itself,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘It is absolutely the soft underbelly [of Europe]. It is virtually an open goal and if Ireland doesn’t realise it is in Russian crosshairs, then it needs to do so pretty quickly.’

Evidence of the country being in Putin’s sights are alarming. On top of the multiple sightings of Yantar spy ships in its 340,000 square miles of marine territory, Russian hackers launched a cyberattack on the health service in 2021, crippling computer systems.

The government was forced to introduce emergency legislation in 2018 to block the renovation of the Russian embassy, plans which would have seen three new storeys and an underground car park. 

Ireland pulled the plug on the construction in 2020, after suspicions that the Kremlin was going to use the base in south Dublin to run a network of spies in Europe.

As non-NATO member, Ireland is also a soft target for hostile countries looking to attack Europe without the risk of a collective response.

But as former British Army Colonel Philip Ingram warns, Ireland would only be the first to fall. ‘With Ireland being part of the EU, once you are there, getting into other EU countries by ferry or by aircraft is very easy indeed. 

‘Therefore, it is a perfect spot as a massive spy hub to coordinate actions against the United Kingdom and other European countries,’ he told the Daily Mail.

Ireland is firmly in Russia’s sights as a gateway to Europe, but the country could not be more ill-equipped to deal with the imposing threat.

Relative to its economy and population, Ireland spends the least on defence within the EU. In 2024, €1.3 billion (£1.1 billion) was allocated to defence, equating to 0.24 per cent of its GDP, compared to the European average of 1.74 per cent.

A record €1.5 billion has been allocated for 2026, but this still represents a quarter of 1 per cent of GDP. Today, Ireland still relies on the RAF to intercept aircraft posing a threat.

The country’s ability to track Russian activity is severely impeded by the fact that it has no centralised intelligence agency, with security managed by a branch of An Garda Síochána, Ireland’s police, and a military intelligence department within the defence forces.

This means that when neighbouring countries detect suspicious vessels steering towards the Irish seas, a lack of secure channels means there is no effective mechanism to issue timely warnings to Dublin or Cork.

Because Ireland has no radar and no sonar, a British warship and helicopter were forced to chase off a Russian submarine that was caught lurking near undersea cables at Cork harbour in December 2023.

Meanwhile, the Irish Naval Service has at times only been able to deploy a single patrol vessel on operations, due to a shortage in personnel. 

The government has belatedly tried to plug the gaps. It placed a €60 million order for sonar – technology that uses soundwaves to detect objects underwater – but the equipment will not be in place until 2027. 

The lack of sonar is alarming, considering the fact that any damage to the critical infrastructure in Ireland’s extensive marine territory could wreak havoc in financial markets across Europe and the US, and cause a giant internet outage impacting homes, hospitals, banks and businesses.

‘Its Defence Forces are hugely undermanned and hugely under-equipped,’ said Ingram. 

‘They have no combat aircraft at all. They have a couple of combat ships but they cannot even fire the main gun on the ships because the last armourer in the Irish Navy retired and has not been replaced. 

‘They cannot fly their military aircraft that they use for casualty evacuation because they have run out of military air traffic controllers to man the airfields and the Irish Army is woefully undermanned.

‘Combine that with the lack of national intelligence and counter-intelligence capability and then add in the factors that Ireland has got a land border with the United Kingdom, that there are no checks in crossing that border, and Ireland is a member of the EU.’

He concludes that if a hostile intelligence organisation wanted to find a way of penetrating EU decision-making by breaking into Ireland, there would be no way of ‘making sure that they can keep the spies out’.  

For the former security officer, the danger posed by Ireland’s unpatrolled waters cannot be overstated.

‘A lot of our data pipelines go through Irish national waters and therefore we are likely to see more activity surveying those and potentially trying to to cut them. 

‘Because Ireland has got no anti-submarine capability, the coasts within the Irish territorial waters on the Atlantic side are ripe for the Russians to put a nuclear-armed missile submarine, where they know that Ireland cannot detect it,’ he warned.

To make matters worse, Ireland’s new president is a firm opponent of expanding military capability, and has warned against ‘spending more money on arms and the militarisation while we reduce the money spent on welfare’.

But compared to other cash-strapped European nations, Dublin has enjoyed three years of bumper budget surpluses and is expecting a €10.2 billion surplus this year and €5.1 billion for 2026.

‘Ireland is absolutely a key vulnerability, and probably needs to start paying its way to make sure that it is not a vulnerability, not just for its own people, but for the rest of us in Europe and NATO,’ said de Bretton-Gordon

‘They need to start bearing the burden that the rest of us are bearing at the moment. And they are probably financially more able to do it the most.’

The Irish government, led by Micheál Martin, has made some progress in terms of catching up with the rest of Europe, such as joining the NATO Partnership for Peace simulations looking at the use of undersea drones to monitor cables.

But Edward Burke, an assistant professor of the history of war at University College Dublin, has warned about President Connolly’s steadfast commitment to neutrality at a time when the threat from the Kremlin is as alarming as ever.

‘When asked about the war in Ukraine, Catherine Connolly condemned Russia’s invasion but also criticised NATO “warmongering” before the conflict began,’ he wrote for the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

‘She has also strongly condemned the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy and described Ireland’s engagement with NATO under its Partnership for Peace programme as “a travesty of the English language because it is a partnership for war”.’

He points out that these statements at at odds with the Irish government, which ultimately has the power to determine policy.  

But the steps taken towards a strengthened military by the Taoiseach have so far been limited. 

Ireland has ordered two Airbus 295 maritime patrol aircraft – planes that normally carry torpedoes and other weapons, a move which looks positive on the surface.

But as Cathal Berry, a former second-in-command of the Irish Army’s special operations Army Ranger Wing, told the Financial Times: ‘It was deliberately requested that our Airbus 295s would be maritime surveillance only.

‘When you have to de-spec an aircraft just so it would not be armed, that tells you there’s something seriously wrong with the security culture.’

Without serious reforms to its commitment to neutrality, the country will continue to be defenseless and vulnerable to foreign threats. If its navy was to spot a suspicious vessel in its maritime territory, for example, the options for retaliation are severely limited. 

‘There’s an etiquette to all this,’ a military source told the newspaper. ‘You don’t get closer than two miles initially. Then at two miles you call them up and say “hello, we’re Irish naval warship” and you start talking to them, trying to get something out of them.’

The Russians tend to reply that they are simply ‘training cadets’ or ‘following orders’, and a deadlock ensues where Ireland, because of its steadfast allegiance to neutrality, has no way to fight back.

For Ingram, without reform, the worst-case scenario would involve Moscow attempting ‘a little green man-type takeover of Ireland in the same way that it did with Crimea’ in 2014.

Because Ireland is not part of NATO, the alliance would not step in to help defend the nation, and the increasingly isolationist US could also just shrug its shoulders as chaos ensues.

‘And if whatever came in afterwards decided to align its political allegiances with the BRICS countries rather than the EU, that would cause the EU a massive dilemma.

‘Vladimir Putin would be sitting behind his big oak desk in Moscow, with a very large glass of the best Russian vodka over ice with a white cat on his knee, smiling.’