{"id":56917,"date":"2025-04-28T07:55:07","date_gmt":"2025-04-28T07:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/56917\/"},"modified":"2025-04-28T07:55:07","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T07:55:07","slug":"irish-tech-cashes-in-on-europes-defence-boom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/56917\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish tech cashes in on Europe\u2019s defence boom"},"content":{"rendered":"

Neutrality does not pay the bills in Dublin<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ireland\u2019s tech start-ups are jumping into Europe\u2019s booming defence market, exploiting their expertise in AI, satellites and subsea surveillance as Brussels doles out cash to counter Russian threats.<\/p>\n

According to the Financial Times<\/a>,\u00a0 Irish companies like Ubotica Technologies, Provizio, VRAI and Cathx Ocean are pivoting towards defence after years focused on commercial tech.<\/p>\n

Ubotica Technologies chief executive Fintan Buckley said: \u201cDemand has always been difficult to crystallise but the market is there much more now.\u201d<\/p>\n

His outfit is talking to governments across Europe about real-time tracking of dark vessels with AI-enhanced satellites.<\/p>\n

Ireland may be a NATO outsider and militarily neutral, but its government, sitting on a huge budget surplus, has faced heavy flak for freeloading on security. Ireland\u2019s maritime area is seven times the size of its landmass, laced with vital transatlantic data cables, yet its overstretched navy can barely deploy two patrol ships at a time.<\/p>\n

Fianna F\u00e1il innovation spokesperson Malcolm Byrne said, \u201cWe\u2019re never going to see Ireland investing in tanks and weapons. But certainly it makes a lot of sense for Ireland to develop our capabilities in areas around cyber security.\u201d<\/p>\n

Provizio chief executive Barry Lunn, who had previously rebuffed military interest, admitted, \u201cWe\u2019ve started answering the door a bit more\u201d to \u201cnon-weaponry-based\u201d defence applications.<\/p>\n

Lunn said: \u201cDeep-tech needs money and what we do needs money \u2014 well then, you have to follow the money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dublin outfit VRAI, which trains offshore workers using AI, says demand from aerospace and defence has surged. Chief executive Pat O\u2019Connor said, \u201cWe\u2019re not a defence company, we just happen to have a lot of demand coming at us from the aerospace, defence, security sector as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cathx Ocean, an underwater imaging firm already working with oil majors like BP, said a third of its business now lies in defence and critical infrastructure protection. Chief executive Adrian Boyle noted the underwater vehicle market was already expected to grow 20 per cent even before Europe’s recent military rethink.<\/p>\n

Cork\u2019s Green Rebel, which deploys robotic submarines across European waters, argues that bolstering Irish tech is a way for Dublin to show it is pulling its weight.<\/p>\n

Jared Peters, director of science and new markets, said: \u201cIt\u2019s a great way to bridge the gap between being a neutral country but not being defenceless.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Neutrality does not pay the bills in Dublin Ireland\u2019s tech start-ups are jumping into Europe\u2019s booming defence market,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56918,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[11330,29951,29955,2993,2000,299,5187,678,29953,29952,29954],"class_list":{"0":"post-56917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-brussels","9":"tag-cables","10":"tag-cathx-ocean","11":"tag-defence","12":"tag-eu","13":"tag-europe","14":"tag-european","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-provizio","17":"tag-ubotica-technologies","18":"tag-vrai"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}