Ireland’s Defence & Security
Spending Over Time

Important data and comparability notes

Defence spending in Irish national budgets

The national Budget Vote is the most direct measure of annual Irish defence spending. The Defence Vote Group (Vote 36 Defence + Vote 35 Army Pensions) has moved from around €0.9 billion in 2012 to €1.25 billion in 2024, €1.35 billion in 2025, and €1.49 billion in Budget 2026 – an 11% year-on-year increase. Defence spending has moved from a slow-growth budget Vote to a policy-anchored expansion. The Department of Defence describes the cumulative uplift since 2022 as the largest planned defence spending increase in the history of the State.

The policy driver for recent increases is explicit. The Irish Government adopted Level of Ambition 2 in July 2022, committing to raise the annual Defence budget to €1.5 billion in January 2022 prices by 2028. Because this target is set in 2022 prices, the equivalent nominal figure by 2028 will be materially higher – the Representative Association of Commissioned Officers estimates closer to €2 billion in 2028 money terms. Budgets and the Defence Policy Review cycle tie annual increases to LOA2 milestones through 2028 and to national security planning. This represents a multi-year structural commitment and reform programme, not a one-off correction.

Note: Vote Group figures include Army Pensions. Capability-only spend (Vote 36 ex-pensions) is materially lower. Source: Department of Defence Budget publications and Oireachtas PQs.

Police and security spending

Ireland’s largest recurring security cost is policing, not defence. An Garda Síochána receives approximately double the Defence Vote Group in current budgets, reflecting the State’s primary spend weight on public order, crime response, and state security policing rather than military capability. The Garda Vote grows steadily with staffing and operational demand rather than in episodic surges. Modern budgets emphasise recruitment recovery, overtime resilience, and ICT/fleet/estate modernisation.

Sources: Department of Defence and Department of Justice press releases on annual Budgets; Oireachtas written answers on historical allocations. Garda 2012 figure is €1.425bn current allocation plus capital.

Budget 2026 raises Garda funding to an unprecedented €2.59 billion, funding up to 1,000 new Garda recruits, 200 additional staff, a doubling of the Garda Reserve to over 600, an overtime budget of €169 million, and €160 million in technology and innovation. Government statements link sustained Garda funding to recruitment increases, operational resilience (overtime), ICT/fleet/estate modernisation, and cyber-enabled threat capacity. The National Cyber Security Centre budget also increases by over 50% to €12 million in Budget 2026.

There are no standalone published spend lines for Garda security and intelligence activity or Defence Forces military intelligence within either Vote, so any assessment of Ireland’s aggregate spend on intelligence and state security has to be inferred rather than read directly from published accounts.

Breakdown of defence spending by function

Eurostat COFOG data classifies Irish government defence expenditure by functional purpose. The picture is stark in its simplicity: Irish defence spending is overwhelmingly military capability expenditure, with small civil-defence lines and effectively no defence R&D.

Source: Eurostat COFOG (gov_10a_exp), current prices in million euro. ‘Defence n.e.c.’ (not elsewhere classified) plus an unclassified residual account for the difference between the total and the sum of visible sub-components.

Military defence has accounted for roughly 85–88% of COFOG total defence since 2011 (with the earlier series showing a larger unclassified residual). Civil defence remains small, modestly rising post-2015 and accounting for around 3% of total. Defence R&D is negligible throughout – a structural contrast with neutral or non-aligned peers such as Sweden and Finland which have invested meaningfully in domestic defence technology and industrial capacity alongside their capability uplift programmes.

Long-run trend: SIPRI data, 1958–2025

The SIPRI long-run dataset is the only consistent series stretching back to before 1995. The earliest available year is 1958, showing US$23 million current spend; the 2024 figure is US$1,333 million and the newly released 2025 figure is US$1,551 million current spend. Two series are presented below: Current US$ (nominal) and % of GDP – each telling a different part of the story. A companion real-terms series (SIPRI constant-2023 US$ and a CPI-deflated current-dollar series) is discussed below.

Source: SIPRI Military Expenditure Database (SIPRI Milex v1.2, April 2025). Earliest data for Ireland from 1958. Per-capita series begins 1988. GNI* figure from Department of Defence via Oireachtas PQ.

The two series have to be read as telling different stories:

• Share of GDP: A clear historical high in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The SIPRI % GDP series peaked at 1.67% in 1980 and stayed above 1.4% through 1985. This reflected elevated defence and internal security pressures during the most intense years of the Troubles, combined with a period of weak Irish GDP growth that compressed the denominator.
• Real spending: The peak is 2008 in constant terms. SIPRI constant-2024 US$ data peaks at US$1,409 million in 2008, against US$1,325 million in 2000 and US$1,061 million in 1980. The 1980 real-terms figure is notably below the 2008 peak. The common shorthand of a ‘real-terms high in the late-1970s / early-1980s’ therefore only holds for the % GDP measure – not for the actual inflation-adjusted level of spending.
• A long decline in % GDP through the 1990s and 2000s, as Ireland’s GDP grew rapidly (and then was inflated further by multinational income flows), compressing defence spend as a share of the economy even when real spend was rising.
• A financial-crisis trough around 2013–2015 in nominal US$ following fiscal consolidation.
• Renewed real growth from roughly 2016–2017, accelerating after the LOA2 commitment in 2022. The 2024 figure is US$1,333 million current (US$255 per capita) and the newly released 2025 figure is US$1,551 million (US$272 per capita) – a 16% year-on-year jump in current US$ terms, primarily reflecting both budget growth and EUR/USD exchange rate movements.

Note on per-capita: SIPRI per-capita US$ series (available from 1988) shows a peak of US$355 per person in 2008, declining to US$213 in 2015 and recovering to US$255 in 2024 and US$272 in 2025. The 2008 peak reflected a combination of strong nominal spend and a favourable EUR/USD rate at that time, and should not be read as a capability-driven real peak.

The Troubles and their impact on spending

The SIPRI data makes visible a connection rarely discussed explicitly in Irish defence policy commentary: The % GDP high in Irish military expenditure coincides closely with the most intense period of the Northern Irish Troubles. Published accounts describe persistent border security and intelligence demands during this period, and the Troubles era coincides with Ireland’s high-water-mark for defence share of GDP and with embedded overtime and specialist policing structures that have had long tails in both the Defence and Justice Votes.

The Troubles created sustained internal-security and intelligence demands that had no peacetime parallel: Border security requirements, intelligence capacity against paramilitary threats on both sides of the border, and specialist policing structures (in An Garda Síochána as much as in the Defence Forces) embedded structural costs into both the Defence and Justice Votes that only gradually unwound after the Good Friday Agreement. The % GDP peak in 1980 and the subsequent long decline track the intensity and then the resolution of that security environment with reasonable fidelity.

Ireland compared with Austria and the EU27

Austria provides the most relevant neutral-state EU peer benchmark for Ireland: both are constitutionally neutral or non-aligned, both are small EU member states, and both are outside NATO. The COFOG comparison is in current prices (inflation effects included) and should be read as indicating relative scale rather than capability equivalence.

Source: Eurostat COFOG (gov_10a_exp). Current prices – nominal comparison only.

Source: Eurostat COFOG (gov_10a_exp). These are nominal (current price) figures; inflation effects are embedded. The ratio narrows after 2015 as Irish spending accelerates.

Austria has consistently spent multiples of Ireland’s COFOG defence total. The ratio narrows after 2015 as Irish spending accelerates under LOA2, reaching approximately 2.3× in 2023 – down from over 3× at the start of the 2000s. Nevertheless, Ireland remains well below its neutral-state peer in absolute level terms. This gap narrows further when adjusted for Ireland’s population (Ireland: ~5.1 million; Austria: ~9.1 million), but does not close.

Ireland vs EU27

When comparing to the EU27 aggregate, Ireland accounts for roughly 0.4–0.6% of EU27 defence spending in nominal COFOG terms – broadly in line with Ireland’s share of EU population but below its share of EU GDP, reflecting Ireland’s historically low defence allocation relative to economic scale.

Source: Eurostat COFOG (gov_10a_exp). Current prices. EU27 aggregate may include countries not present in all years.

Conclusions

Several things are clear from the combined dataset:

• The direction is unambiguously upward. Nominal, real and % GNI* measures all show increasing Irish defence spend since the mid-2010s, with the pace accelerating after the LOA2 commitment in 2022.
• The level remains internationally low. Even after sustained increases, Ireland at 0.22% of GDP (SIPRI 2024) is among the lowest defence spenders in the EU. The Department of Defence’s own measure against GNI* (the adjusted national income measure that strips out multinational distortions) records defence at 0.4% of GNI* in 2023 (per Oireachtas PQ, May 2025) – still far below any neutral-state peer.
• The structural question is pensions. With Army Pensions running at approximately 25% of the Vote Group, capability spend is significantly below the headline budget figure. The sustainability of pension obligations alongside increased operational and capital investment requires monitoring.
• R&D and industrial capacity are absent. Unlike Sweden, Finland, or Austria, Ireland has built no defence technology or industrial base alongside its capability investment. This has long-run implications for technological sovereignty in a rapidly changing security environment.
• LOA2 is a floor, not a ceiling. The 2022–2028 commitment anchors spending growth to milestones, but the destination – even at full LOA2 delivery – would still leave Ireland below most neutral EU peers. Whether LOA2 is adequate for Ireland’s actual security environment is a policy question the data can frame but not answer.

Data sources

Core quantitative datasets

Irish defence policy and budget documents

Irish security and policing sources

Revision note