Ireland Announces Record $1.5 Billion Defense Budget for 2025

Ireland’s Ministry of Defense announced a topline budget of €1.35 billion ($1.5 billion) for fiscal year 2025 on October 1. The FY25 allocation marks a €100 million ($111 million) rise over the 2024 earmark, a year-on-year nominal increase of 8 percent and represents a record funding allocation for defense.

Much of the budget will be earmarked for higher soldiers pay and recruitment efforts aimed at attracting 400 additional personnel. Other allocations are directed towards a potential acquisition of a third Airbus C295 airlifter for the Irish Air Corps that would enable troop and armored vehicle transport, as well as disaster relief and humanitarian missions and rescue of citizenry abroad.

Traditionally, as a militarily neutral country without active enemies and on friendly terms with the three closest militarized nations (Britain, Canada, and the U.S.), Ireland can allow restrained military funding without undue concern.

However, the outbreak of war in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion launched on February 24, 2022, prompted introspection in Dublin. The need to transform and upgrade Ireland’s extremely limited military capabilities was recognized and the government is now undertaking some of the recommendations laid out in a report by the Commission on the Defence Forces. That report was unveiled right as Russian troops poured across Ukraine’s borders, making it timely in its delivery.

According to a government statement the impetus is to use the Commission’s Level of Ambition 2 (LOA2) concept as the current springboard for revamping the Irish Defence Forces by the targeted year of 2028. The capital cost estimated outlined in the LOA2 amounts to €2.465 billion ($2.73 billion) over a ten-year period, or about €247 million ($273 million) per year. This money will go towards both equipment and military infrastructure, which in U.S. military “colors of money” parlance means procurement and MILCON (military construction).

The Commission’s LOA2 procurement recommendations include: heavier armored vehicles for the Irish Army that will replace the current inventory of 80 MOWAG Piranha armored personnel carriers (APCs) by 2030; a new ground-based air defense system; a national coastal radar surveillance capability; replacement of the three oldest vessels in the Irish Navy’s fleet (the retired LE Eithne helicopter-carrying patrol vessel and two ex-U.K. Royal Navy offshore patrol vessels, the latter of which are being replaced by two decommissioned Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN) inshore patrol vessels); and an air surveillance radar.