{"id":224259,"date":"2025-12-09T20:01:30","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T20:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/224259\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T20:01:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T20:01:30","slug":"does-irelands-neutrality-leave-room-for-increased-defence-spending-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/224259\/","title":{"rendered":"Does Ireland\u2019s neutrality leave room for increased defence spending? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The appearance of drones of unknown origin<\/a> in Dublin last week around the time of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy\u2019s visit again highlighted the security challenges of the present day and Ireland\u2019s lack of capability to act in its own defence.<\/p>\n

Neutrality remains a popular policy<\/a>, as again demonstrated recently by the election of Catherine Connolly as president. That popularity does not answer the question of how much Ireland should invest in its own defence. <\/p>\n

Ireland diverges from other neutral European countries in our low defence spending and reliance on others for protection, information and security. But against those calling for bigger defence budgets, others warn of militarisation and point out the money could be better spent elsewhere<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So does being a voice for peace preclude greater defence spending, or is defence spending a crucial part of a viable neutrality? On today\u2019s Inside Politics podcast<\/a> Hugh Linehan is joined by Naomi O\u2019Leary to pick apart the elements of Ireland\u2019s approach to defence and neutrality, how we compare to others and what questions will arise as Ireland comes under increasing pressure in Europe to boost capabilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The appearance of drones of unknown origin in Dublin last week around the time of Ukrainian president Volodymyr…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,64414,17,11,12,15,16,120630,5,120629,550,105949,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-224259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-inside-politics-podcast","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-neutrality","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-noami-oleary","22":"tag-russia","23":"tag-the-irish-times","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories","26":"tag-world","27":"tag-world-news","28":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115691394374177256","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}