In December last year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a brief stop-off in Ireland on the return leg of a transatlantic trip for talks with the Trump administration. Because the jet stream was particularly potent that evening, Zelensky’s plane arrived a few minutes ahead of schedule, landing in Dublin at around 10:50 p.m.
Ten minutes later, at exactly the time the Ukrainian presidential aircraft had been originally due to make its final approach, four unidentified but military-style drones flew right into what would have been the president’s flight path. The state or entity responsible for the drones was never identified, but the risk was clear: had just a few things gone differently, a mid-air collision between the drones and the presidential aircraft might have occurred.
A Close Call
The incident was not widely reported in Europe, but sent shockwaves through Ireland’s security establishment, for the simple reason that the country lacked either the technology or the capability to prevent such a serious incursion into its airspace by unidentified aircraft.
Ireland’s conceit for many years has been that, as a neutral country, defense spending was simply unnecessary. No European nation spends less on its own defense, with Ireland clocking in at just 0.2% of GDP. Even Malta manages more than double that amount. The country has no combat air force or independent air-interception capability, just 8,000 frontline soldiers, and a small naval service with eight patrol vessels, only some of which are available for operations at any given time. Ireland still does not have its own fully operational military radar detection or air defense capability.
Geography, of course, has long been a factor in justifying Ireland’s lack of defense spending: a neutral country on the westernmost edge of Europe, it is surrounded on both sides of the Atlantic by friendly larger nations. Though just a few hours from the Russian border by plane, Ireland is buffered by three dozen other states that have more immediate reasons to worry about Europe’s eastern flank – so for years the thinking in Ireland has been that the only circumstances in which defense would be required would be those in which all of Europe had already fallen. In which case, the thinking went, resistance would be futile anyway.
The Redundancy of Traditional Thought
Modern warfare and threats, however, have made that thinking redundant. The country is not likely to be invaded, but it is clearly vulnerable to drone incursions, espionage, cyberattacks and hybrid threats. And, as of the end of this month, it will hold the EU’s rotating presidency – which means that the great and the good of the continent will be flying in and out of Dublin for summits, meetings, lunches and general Euro-frivolity. This makes Dublin what they might term in the Kremlin – or in any other hostile state – a “target-rich environment”.
For this reason, the Irish government is calling in reinforcements: European military assistance is being considered to help protect key events, especially by sea and air, over the six-month period of its EU presidency. It is anticipated that EU vessels may be stationed off the Irish coast, providing air-interception cover against drone incursions, while there has also been discussion of foreign security specialists being present on Irish soil to cover major events.
However, this is controversial, and Ireland’s small but dedicated hard left is determined to prevent it from happening. One ally the left has? The Irish constitution – which dictates that only the Irish state may “raise an armed force”. There is already talk of constitutional challenges if foreign personnel are deployed in any significant security role.
The European Freeloader?
For other EU states, this episode is another example of Ireland’s persistent recalcitrance – harsher critics might call it “freeloading” on defense. For not only is Ireland at the bottom of the league table in terms of defense spending; it is also one of Europe’s most low-tax countries as it relates to corporations, which has used its location, English-language proficiency and extremely low corporate taxes to attract an array of US multinationals to headquarter on the island, from whence they can operate freely in the EU market while routing their profits through Dublin. Or as one European said to this reporter this week: “Ireland benefits financially more than any other country from the security Europe provides, but refuses even to defend its own airspace.”
Threats to Denmark
Cooperative efforts to defend EU summits are not new, of course: last year, France and Sweden sent anti-drone units to Denmark to help defend that country during its own EU presidency and to combat the persistent aerial drone incursions that plagued the Danes and others in the second half of 2025.
Zelensky’s close call in Ireland last December demonstrates that the threat is urgent and perhaps, more terrifyingly, relatively low-cost. In an era where hostile actors can simply flood the flight path of aircraft with cheap drones, the array of ever more expensive and complex defensive systems required simply to guarantee the functionality of European democracy becomes ever greater. For the Irish, Europe’s defense laggards for several generations, a new domestic political fault line is opening between defense realists and those who either cling romantically to neutrality or insist that Russia is no threat and defense spending merely provokes the Kremlin.
That latter instinct – relentlessly encouraged by the Kremlin itself – will be recognizable to other EU democracies, where it has grown in recent years. But for now, in Ireland, spurred by the narrowly avoided Zelensky disaster and the embarrassment of going to neighbors – including the British – to defend Ireland during an EU presidency, the debate seems finally to be leaning toward realism.