Leo Varadkar has acknowledged that Ireland must better defend its waters from potential Russian sabotage, but denied claims that the country’s longstanding military neutrality meant it was freeloading off its strategic partners.
Russian ships were spotted close to Ireland’s north-west and south-west coastline earlier this year, sparking fears they could be mapping and monitoring international data transmission cables and gas pipelines located there.
Ireland’s prime minister told the Financial Times that, while no indications were evident of an imminent threat, his officials “have to do more” to monitor the situation.
“There’s two areas that we’re working on with our [EU, US and UK] partners,” he said. “One is to make sure that [cables and pipelines] are more secure and harder to sabotage. And then, that we could respond to a threat if it did emerge.”
The remarks come amid a public debate on whether Ireland’s position of neutrality — a stance it has held since before the second world war — remains fit for purpose following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February.
Ireland held consultations on the issue in June with input from international experts, academics and service personnel.
Some protesters said it was an attempt to push Ireland into Nato, but strong defences were also made of Ireland’s neutrality. President Michael D Higgins waded into the debate in a newspaper interview in which he warned Ireland it was “playing with fire”.
Varadkar maintains that Ireland will stay out of Nato, despite the decision of both Finland and Sweden to join. He also defended Ireland’s role supplying only non-lethal equipment and humanitarian aid.
The three Baltic states, with a combined population not much above Ireland’s 5.1mn, have been Nato members for two decades. Finland joined the alliance in April. Varadkar said Ireland was “never going to be a significant military power, is never going to be a huge asset to Nato, if we ever were to join it”.
Ireland spends just a fifth of a percentage point of its gross domestic product on defence, against a Nato target of 2 per cent — though most members miss this amount too.
The prime minister hit back sharply against claims that the country was freeloading, saying that was “definitely not” the case. “I’ve read that commentary . . . It’s certainly not the kind of thing that gets said to me [by EU peers].”
Ireland’s relative distance from continental Europe and history as a colony of Britain lie behind its neutrality.
Varadkar said EU partners appreciated the security contributions that Ireland had made away from the battlefield. “No country in western Europe, on a per-capita basis, has accepted as many [Ukrainian] refugees as we have,” he said.
Ireland is already involved in UN peacekeeping, the EU’s Pesco initiative for closer military co-operation and Nato’s Partnership for Peace. “There probably aren’t that many countries in the world that have an international development budget that’s as big as our defence budget,” Varadkar said. “I think that’s actually a positive thing.”
The pro-Irish unity Sinn Féin party echoed Varadkar’s stance in a parliamentary debate in June. But that’s where Varadkar’s alignment ends with his rival, which is channelling voter anger at an acute housing crisis and is topping opinion polls ahead of a general election to be held by spring 2025.
Varadkar said the government was delivering “real signs of progress” in homebuilding, but admitted “it’s too soon to say we’ve turned the corner”.
Voters appear weary. Fine Gael has been in government since 2011. While Varadkar has dubbed the period “austerity to prosperity”, spanning economic bust to a boom driven by a huge tax windfall from global tech and pharma companies, his party’s support has sunk to 18 per cent in one poll.
Still, Varadkar maintains that the economic record of his party, which has governed with its allies Fianna Fáil and the Greens since 2020, gives the coalition a “realistic” prospect of returning to power. Jointly the three parties outpoll Sinn Féin, whose own support has fallen recently to 29-31 per cent.
“It’s a significant risk to put . . . a populist party in office,” Varadkar said of Sinn Féin. “Historically, they’ve got all the big calls wrong, and will do so again . . . Up until very recently, they were a Eurosceptic party.”
Sinn Féin would “tax talent hard”, had opposed free-trade deals and was out-of-touch with small businesses, he added.
The government, meanwhile, plans to stash the corporate tax bonanza in sovereign wealth and infrastructure funds to face the challenges presented by its fast-growing population, including growing pressures on housing, infrastructure and pension costs ahead.
Varadkar said Ireland would seek to cash in on robotics, AI and other digital investment opportunities despite job cuts in its tech sector including nearly 900 at IT consulting group Accenture announced this week.
“Trump was change, Brexit was change,” Varadkar said. “Change isn’t always for the better, in my view.”