According to a report in The Irish Times, a Royal Navy warship will provide air defence during a meeting of EU defence and foreign affairs ministers in County Wicklow next week, while remaining outside Irish territorial waters because of constitutional restrictions.

A Royal Navy air defence warship is reportedly due to deploy to the Irish Sea next week at Ireland’s request to provide protection during a meeting of European Union defence and foreign affairs ministers in County Wicklow, according to The Irish Times.

The unusual arrangement was reported by Irish Times investigations reporter Conor Gallagher, who said British and French warships providing air defence during Ireland’s six-month EU presidency have been required to remain around 22 kilometres offshore because of legal advice received by the Irish Government. Although Dublin formally requested assistance from the two navies, the report says officials were advised that foreign military forces conducting active operations inside Irish territory would likely raise constitutional problems.

Gallagher summarised the forthcoming British deployment on X, writing: “Next week, at Ireland’s request, a Royal Navy warship will provide air defence during a meeting of EU ministers in Wicklow. But, to comply with the Irish Constitution, the ship must remain outside Irish territorial waters.”

According to The Irish Times, advice from Ireland’s Attorney General concluded that the deployment of foreign military forces on active operations within Irish territory would likely be unconstitutional even where their presence had been formally requested by the Irish Government. The report cites Article 15 of the Irish Constitution in explaining the legal advice, saying officials were told that only the Oireachtas has the right to raise a military force on Irish territory.

When asked about this, a Royal Navy spokesperson told us:

“The UK and Ireland regularly cooperate on shared security challenges. We do not speculate on potential operational tasking of Royal Navy vessels.”

The Irish Times also reports that the French frigate Aquitaine was stationed in Dublin Bay, just outside the 22-kilometre limit, on 1 July while dozens of European heads of government were visiting Ireland. The ship reportedly provided air defence while Irish military aircraft and naval vessels were also deployed to secure the area.

The report says a separate legal issue arose over whether a foreign warship positioned outside Irish territorial waters could take lethal action against an airborne threat over Ireland, such as a hostile drone or hijacked aircraft. Under Irish Defence Forces rules of engagement, known internally as COD 6, only Irish military officers can authorise the use of force in such circumstances, according to the newspaper.

As a workaround, an Irish naval officer was reportedly placed aboard the French ship as a liaison officer and given responsibility for providing final authorisation if lethal force was required. The Irish Times reports that this could have included authorising the use of long-range anti-aircraft missiles against an airborne threat.

European warships are reportedly expected to continue providing air defence during major events for the remainder of Ireland’s EU presidency. According to the report, next week’s meeting of EU defence and foreign affairs ministers in County Wicklow will be supported by a Royal Navy air defence warship operating in the Irish Sea.

The Irish Government has not publicly confirmed the French frigate’s earlier security role. The Irish Times reported that Ireland’s Department of Defence referred questions to An Garda Síochána, while a Garda spokeswoman said the force had no knowledge of Operation Fianna, the military security operation mounted for Ireland’s EU presidency.

Craig Langford
Craig Langford
Trained as a mechanical engineer, Craig took an unconventional route into journalism, bringing with him a rare technical precision and analytical depth that continues to set his reporting apart.

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112 COMMENTS

  1. Seeing as this is EU business I’m curious how we became involved. Was it by request or did we volunteer for the role?
    The article says Ireland formally requested our help but that is just a rubber stamp for what has already been decided.

    • The typical Irish hypocrisy. If there is successful attack because the ship is not on territorial waters, it is still the Royal Navy with a black eye.

      UK should not accept this. It should tell the Irish that the ship should have total freedom to do its mission.
      I do also wonder too what is the ROE, does it need the Irish President and PM approval to fire when a decision maybe needs to be taken in seconds?

      • Btw territorial waters is 22km distance the ship has to be from shore. That just means a lot of threats are not interceptable.

      • written constitutions aren’t easily changed or quickly, and why exactly are posters here fixated on the Irish President? It’s a figurehead position, as in no political power. The ROEs are likely a variant of the agreement for the RAF coverage, or what was worked out with the French.

    • Just out of curiosity, which one of the multitudes of spare British anti-aircraft vessels will be available for this task?

  2. Mmmm why would a non EU country consider supplying a warship for a EU meeting? Could be wrong of course seeing how our present lot are cosying up to them.

    • Putin is driving the UK and EU closer together and obliging Ireland to join in European defence. Burnham’s first overseas visit was to Ukraine, who want to join the EU. My guess is that he sees EU rejoining and/or associated membership for Ukraine as parallel projects.

      • Honestly, I don’t see Ukraine getting into Ukraine. NATO’s more likely, JEF most definitely.

        Poland would kick up a fuss, the French too, based on Agriculture. That’s before everything else.

    • Why? Because Irish neutrality is a myth. The reality is inconveniently different. You mustn’t tell the potato famine brigade though.

        • Problematical relations with our fellow Europeans is clearly NOT one sided whatever the understandable momentary humour in ridiculing Ed. In reality though not sensible cutting off our noses to simply spite our face. Rapidly becoming a US Trump Crown colony is not in my view at least, a wonderful alternative to European cooperation so where it’s for our or mutual benefit, be it short, medium or longer term let’s share the football.

      • So Mr. Net zero Milliband fly to Dublin for a congress and had a warship parked outside to keep him safe? Wonder what the carbon footprint on that one was.

    • I would expect that as the EU is rapidly creating alternatives to dollar trade hegemony, Starlink, Microsoft, Palantir, Visa, Mastercard, supporting combined ai and robotic research, establishing agreements with Google specifically sandboxing their European servers from the US Cloud Act which threatens the freedoms of us all, and building all manner of other US resistant structures and technologies, it just might be sensible for us to cosy up to them a bit, so that at the very least we have options as and when Trump or his later political offspring come calling demanding we talk a language called American and demand we rename ourselves Mar-A-Lago East.

  5. I do wonder is it more we have an AG that’s taken a particular “puritanical” view on these restrictions given historic examples.

    • Heya Mark, Always a frustrating topic this is. Dublin politicians and bureaucrats and all.

      All of the defence procurement coming down the pipe for Ireland is good but it all needs to move a lot faster. The future plans for the NS need to be decided and executed.

      • The “plan” is meant to be done, concentrating on the 60s with the new 76mm, secondaries, sonar and CUAS additions but it won’t be till next year before the first one goes into the docks for work.

          • The longer term plan is still being drawn up, but for both the AC and the NS, the low personnel count (both book and current) is more the hampering factor

            • The gov should pull the trigger soon as it takes many years to get these new vessels. Hopefully by then the staffing levels will be sorted.

  6. I do wonder what we get out of this arrangement, it strikes me as more freeloading by the Irish, what, in defence terms do they give back to the UK or the EU? I would be happy to be enlightened.

    • An American might find it ironic of a European nation complaining about defence freeloading! But your wider point is true, Ireland need to up their game if they want help.

      • The Americans might resent the low spending of some NATO members, but we are in a military alliance with mutual obligations and host bases that can be used by NATO. Ireland is neutral, has no 9bligation to come to our aid and frankly wrinkles it’s nose at our armed forces despite us footing the bill for their defence when they have no capabilities of their own to speak of.

  8. Oh my God, I’m going to love the reaction on this one!
    Seems sensible, if the Irish asked and lack such capability themselves.

    • Hi M8, Like you I voted for Brexit, I didn’t then and don’t now like the Bureaucratic driven overbearing centrist focussed EU system which forces Natiin States to do things they don’t like and would never vote for.
      But being faced with continuous threats from Russia, China trying to obliterate our remains ing industries and a US Government that just cannot be trusted it does make all European countries prioritise reality over dogma.
      The irony of this is just beyond being funny it’s a very direct reminder to every single one of those EU countries (except Ireland, Cyprus, Malta and Austria) that we still have their backs.
      Silly fact if Russia just attacked Ireland and no NATO members citizens were involved NATO is under no obligation to lift a finger to defend them. However do so and kill NATO Defence and Foreign Ministers then yep we are all in as it happened in the Geographic Area covered by NATO Treaty.

      So yes this is very good move on our part and is very important as it demonstrates our European credentials but reminds everyone that we are the only country that has its entire Nuclear deterrent devoted to NATO tasking.

      Oh and pisses the French off 😜

      • I agree.
        I’m not even massively opposed to rejoining if it becomes necessity for Europe to align to defend itself.
        Pity some EU nations didn’t remember that during the separation, treated like garbage by some, until they need us.
        Even Farage consistently reminded we all remain fellow Europeans, friends ( hopefully ) and allies, but the need to punish was the imperative.
        Our own politicians I feel are too weak to get big concessions either, it’s what we can give it seems.
        This might set a few off, I don’t care, that’s my view and I’m not about to debate it.

        • Quite, not that im a sour grapes type but i do remember Tusk tweeting the “cake? No cherries” picture and the cant have your cake and eat it rhetoric and now we see a Germany that was keen to cosy up to Russia for gas, dismantle its nuclear industry now being quite happy to have UK (with USA) give Ukraine a fighting chance on day 1 and make inroads to have a nuclear umbrella from the UK.

          All of which is fine, but perhaps a little humility from them with respect to the fact that although democratically we did not want political union its not a binary your not our freinds now moment either. I remain firmly rooted to not being in the EU as it is today but crave much greater military and economic organisation and co-operation.

          Its absurd to me to need to make the point and I certainly dont do it to attempt to make europe a subordinate to the UK but the reality is we were there in WW2 and we were there for Ukraine before even day 1, some respect for that being rather morev important than being in the political union would be nice to see.

        • I was alway on two sides around the referendum.. I alway felt it was going to to cause a lot of economic pain to leave, but I was worried about sovereign control and lack of direct accountability to the electorate of the Uk.. but I felt we needed to try and steer it in the right direction and I worried about the economic hit.. so I reluctantly voted remain..

          But my view has shifted somewhat now.. I’m less worried about the economic and utterly fucking terrified about the geopolitical and geostrategic.. I very much fear that NATO is going to shatter like glass at some point… the US and EU are going to have one hell of a fall out and the EU because of a geopolitically necessity becomes a fully integrated super state.. the very thing we feared growing that essentially freaked the UK out of Europe in first place.. this will leave the UK as a medium sized power with its arse hanging out between the US and Europe and just off to the side the horror story of a Russia that’s also a medium size power feeling hemmed in on all sides by the U.S, EU and chinase super power blocks.. with its only way to free breathing space being good access to the Atlantic.. through the hated Anglo Saxons.. and that hanging out not part of any superpower arse.. or even worse the US and Europe decide the are going to argue over the UK and whose puppet state it is….

          I fear the UK is sailing into waters no medium sized independent power wants to be in..sitting on a major geostrategic choke point vital to far bigger powers than are potentially willing to come to blows over it…

      • I’m not sure if attacking that meeting would trigger article 5.. it has to be an attack within the boundaries of article 6 and the sovereign territory of Ireland is outside of the article six boundaries….

        Covered territories: Member territories in Europe or North America, the territory of Turkey, and islands under a member’s jurisdiction in the North Atlantic north of the Tropic of Cancer.Forces and assets: Member forces, vessels, or aircraft while in or over these areas, the Mediterranean Sea, or the North Atlantic north of the Tropic of Cancer…

        Essentially it’s a NATO article five dead zone because it’s not covered by article six.. If they were all sitting on a ship outside of Irelands territorial waters it would…this is essentially pertinent as Donald Trump has said the outcome of the CIA directors visit to Moscow is a direct promise Russia will not take any action against an NATO nation… but I’m betting Putin is very much think… what about them.

        • I’m pretty sure that if you dumped a cruise missile on a few Ministers of Defence that would count as “Forces and assets in the […] North Atlantic north of the Tropic of Cancer.”

          • The problem is that it’s pretty explicit it’s the territories of the nato members the Mediterranean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean.. I’m pretty sure and from what I have read essentially the sovereign territory of the republic is excluded from article 6 and if its excluded from article 6 nothing that occurs on it can trigger article 5..

            It’s one of those interesting legal holes..

            If you consider otherwise one nato nation can completely circumvent the treaty restrictions by placing its forces in a non NATO country its friends with and allowing them to be attacked..

            Essentially consider Ukraine.. if article 6 covers everything European North America and North Atlantic/med the UK could such the whole of nato in by sticking a battalion on the Ukrainian front line and waiting for Russia to attack it.. the US could cover Mexico in the same way etc..

            So I think that is why it’s very clear.. only the territories of the treaty members and essentially the high seas.

            • No it isn’t. It states Article 5 applies to forces stationed in member states, occupation forces [etc] *OR* forces in the North Atlantic Area.
              If you want to argue Ireland is not in the North Atlantic Area, be my guest, but I don’t imagine anyone would give you the time of day if multiple defence ministers had just had a cruise missile launched at them in Dublin.

              • Depends which defence ministers got, got.. would you bet your life the US would not argue the toss arouns agreeing to an article five if they had zero skin in the game. I’m not entirely convinced to be honest..

    • Yes very sensible. I just think the Irish Gov should make a financial contribution to the UK MoD for doing this.

  9. Is Ireland still acting as a tax haven and undermining uk tax receipts?
    I’m all for co-operation, not so much when a country gouges tax revenue from another then asks the other country to fund its defence.

      • If it’s cheaper to send the British kids to Ireland for boarding school than use British ones, kind of figure that’s a British issue.

    • I’m all for competition – If Ireland have better economic policies then they get more tax. We pursued socialism after 1945 and lost the peace as a result.
      But I do think we need to be firmer with Ireland on defence, I hope we’re charging them a service fee behind the scenes.

      • Its not really a better economic policy to see that your neighbours are generating billions in revenue for companies and then offer them a tax haven to domocile their IP knowing that the revenue generated domestically pales into insignificance compared to the possibility of having their tax declared in your jurastiction. Its literally sticking one up your neighbours backside for your own gain.

        Its all shell companies that generate their revenue in other european countries that base their IP HQ in ireland simply to avoid higher tax rates. Why doesnt the UK (and other EU countries) compete on that with tax rates? Because our other corp tax receipts would suffer and would likely reduce revenue overall.

        Ultimately though it is our governments fault as we could legislate against such behaviour, particularly as its a handful of mega corps making the most use of it so very bespoke legislation would be easliy enforceable for very real returns.

    • Yes because the City of London and the various British Overseas Territories have no history of creative accounting…

      • Remind me when did they ask Ireland to come to their defence?
        I’m willing to be corrected but when we needed to go down to the Falklands not a single EU nation joined us. One might easily argue though that if the USA had not deposited a bunch of AIM9L at Assencion then there could have been a different outcome to that expidition.

        Not you’ll find me standing up for the tax status of the offshore territories.

        • Well kind of hard for EU members to join us for the Falklands War when the EU didn’t exist yet… it’s predecessor, the EEC, didn’t have any mutual defence clauses, and we also didn’t ask anyone to join us.

    • Depends on the nature of the threat, the airspace agreement I believe is more to do with fast access, not sitting endlessly flying CAP.
      And if the threat is a Drone from within, or a fishing boat offshore, a warship on station you’d think is more suitable?

      The other point is why. Is this a precaution, or is there intelligence of a possible threat? What we don’t see behind the scenes.

  12. It’s shocking that Ireland has the brass neck to ask foreign warships to defend its airspace while hiding behind a constitution that won’t let them enter its territorial waters.

    This EU summit should have been moved to another country to embarrass the Irish government and its people for their free riding on the rest of the continent.

    Unarmed neutrality is a f**king joke and the Irish should be ashamed of themselves for maintaining such a stance when Europe has its back to the wall.

    One of the reason both we and Euro don’t have the funds to rearm is US Mega corporations based in Dublin dodging tax and now this.

    • “It’s shocking that Ireland has the brass neck to ask foreign warships to defend its airspace while hiding behind a constitution that won’t let them enter its territorial waters.”

      Precisely.

  13. The Irish Government should be paying for it’s own defence – the Irish need to stop freeloading and buy the relevant ships – aircraft and equipment for their own defensive needs.

  14. This is the joke of Irish neutrality, Ireland needs to get off the fence, it’s an EU nation and if Russia wants to attack the West or EU it’s not going to go… gosh but Ireland is neutral..

    I could understand if Ireland had full neutrality through strength or neutrality through complete disengagement.. but it’s done neither.. it’s picked a side politically, left itself without any way to defend Itself but still tries to pretend it is military neutral..

      • Ireland was Pro-Allies in the war to the point where the US wanted to award medals to some of the senior DF personal, you have a complaint about Pro-Axis neutrals take that up with Spain or the Swiss.

        • This is the think Irish neutrality has always been a paper thin illusion.. it even invited the British army over in the Cold War to map and survey all possible west coast invasion beaches.. just incase the Soviet Union invaded and the US needed to liberate Ireland.

          Operation sandstone.. when the British army and navy spent a year operating in Southern Ireland to help map out how the U.S. could liberate it… even in its neutral “ not neutral” state….

          • I love how that’s suddenly become a “go to” example, not sure why, it’s far from the first.
            The reality is “Irish neutrality” has always basically been based on the calculation Finance did in the 1920’s. If the enemy is the UK, Ireland will never be able to generate sufficient combat capabilities to defeat a hostile UK, and if the enemy isn’t the UK, then said enemy has the strength to defeat the UK first, which means Ireland can’t defeat them either.

            It’s Finance driven, as it remains even today as the department and its bastard step child DPER battle hard against LoA2, sadly Finance learned far too much from Whitehall when it was created.

            • Trouble is as we both know the if they can defeat the UK then what hope Ireland is a false paradigm, because any conventional attack on any part of the British isles is by nature strategic and any nation if it’s prepared can weather strategic attacks.. if it’s not prepared it cannot, but undertaking strategic attacks is hard work and by nature not cheap so if you can weather it and maybe even strike back then enemy will probably at some point get bored of a pointless exchange and as they say fuck off home…so the UK and Ireland could both be attacked at the same time and if the UK develops it’s resilience to such attacks it could hold out while an unprepared republic is forces to a humiliating peace table… as for the other, I honestly cannot ever see the Uk attacking the republic, unless it’s suborned by a hostile nation as a launch pad to attack the UK… which I essentially what causes all the conflict between the two nations in the first place.. that and the land grabbing tendencies of the Normans ( I always blame the French).

          • Dev Cade to the German Embassy because the American Ambassador was being his usual absolutely terrible, and yes Ireland was Pro Allies, from intelligence sharing, to allowing Allied aircraft to be repaired and returned to allowing Allied personnel to return to the North.

            Since you commented about the Portuguese navy, are you Portuguese? What about Portuguese neutrality? Or Spains? Or Sweden providing Iron ore to Germany while neutral? Or the Swiss?

            Why of the European nations that remained neutral in WW2, does Ireland get singled out, when others were actively pro Axis?

            • Because Sweden was surrounded on all sides by Nazi Germany, so was Switzerland, either not keeping Hitler on side would have ended in immediate occupation, Portugal entering on the allied side would have ended in swift occupation by Franco and Spain’s government had basically been installed by Hitler in the 30’s, so it keeping Neutral was all that could be expected.

              The Irish cowards on the other hand, had the entire Royal Navy and most of the US Navy between them and any threat. Even Luftwaffe bombing raids where unlikely due to range and the RAF being mostly between Ireland and any threat. Yet the scum where so caught up in their victim complex that they sat on their hands and refused to help fight the actual Nazi’s.

              Every time an Irishman starts bitching about the British they need to be reminded that Britain went to war multiple times for the self determination of other nation states, Belgium, Poland, while the Irish Republic was happy to see other people be subjugated while whining about how mean the British where.

    • Land of Saints and scholars: it is a big cultural challenge for Ireland renounce its neutrality. Irish missionaries spread Christianity to Scotland, the north of England and large parts of mainland Europe. It would be a quantum shift in national identity. Remember, the Irish voted against the Lisbon treaty first time around. Their current position gives them a moral independence which is a valuable catalyst in forging an E-NATO.

      • There is nothing scholar about putting head in sand about human characteristics which have had war since start of times- and this is a super benevolent view of Ireland.
        When it suits them they very well murder civilians.

  15. I’m sure the Irish can sleep safe in their beds knowing that no foreign power has the legal right to put troops on their soil. If only Poland or Ukraine had thought to take such preventative action!

  17. If Ireland think they could be subject to an attack they need to maintain the necessary military to defend themselves from it. You either hide behind your “neutrality” or you don’t. Likewise, When it comes to International Conferences and such like, you either have the ability to host them, or you don’t. Lacking the ability to guarantee security comes under the “don’t’ section and therefore Ireland should not be granted them.

  19. Sadly Ukraine has more chance of NATO than getting into the EU in the next 25 years. Its economy is a wartime economy riddled with corruption and state support necessary in wartime. There is no way it will move to any kind of membership until the war is over and democracy settles back down, the economy recovers from the devastation that will follow the end of the war and corruption is rooted out. Once the war ends its curtains for Vlad because the Russian economy will implode and the same will happen in Ukraine and it will take a long tome to recover. The EU wanted Eastern Europe so badly and paid a very high price but now is reaping the benefit so Ukraine’s time might come if they stay our friends that is!

  20. Until the end of the year, Ireland currently holds the EU presidency. The article doesn’t mention that RAF fighters and French maritime patrol aircraft are also on standby when important EU meetings are being held in Ireland.

    I live in Ireland and defence is an even lower priority then the UK, generally being considered a waste of money. The near universal view of both the public and politicians is that “Ireland is neutral, the Irish are a great Craig and everyone likes us… no one will attack us”. The crazy thing is that behind the scenes the Irish government is being forced to be more pragmatic by Russian activities in the airspace and seas around Ireland, and is secretly making (unpublished) defence agreements with the UK, France and USA that verge on being illegal constitutionally.

  21. I don’t see the issue with this. A friendly, neighbouring country asks for help using one of our assets. If nothing else, it’s a handy training exercise. It’s not as if the UK hasn’t asked for help in the past., ASW airborne patrols for one, and I’m sure the French or US are having to backup the lack of Astutes at sea. . We provided heavy lift for French forces in Mali without any issue. What would it say about us if we refused?

  22. Freeloaders.
    While Ireland steal billions from their EU partners they expect the EU and also the UK, provided they stay outside their territorial limits, to protect them.
    And it is not me accusing the Irish of theft. That comes from the EU Parliament itself.
    Source. EU Parliament. Report on financial crimes, tax evasion and tax avoidance. 26-March-19. Items 327 thru 330.

  23. Will the money the Irish pay be used to purchase some more T45s to meet the demand? Surely the Irish will be paying us handsomely for avoiding their own defence. Although I’d prefer the small number of T45s to be defending UK airspace.

      • Then perhaps it is time for the Republic to join the real world on the subject of neutrality, even Finland and Sweden recognise this.

      • I think Mark in this case the constitution needs to be looked at.. if it’s compromising the ability of its friends to help secure the safety of the Irish and EU leadership it’s a bit of an issue and in the present circumstances it’s a big issue.. Russia has it seems just promised it will not make an attack on NATO territory.. but there is one place it can attack every EU nation and humiliate the UK. Without attacking the EU and triggering article five and that’s having a go at this meeting in Ireland.. maybe it needs to get a fellow EU member state to deploy a GBAD to protect the meeting… because RBS 70 is not in really adequate on its own.. and If the T45 is beyond the radar horizon it’s not much cop either..

        • Changing the Constitution requires a public majority in favour of the change… There is no combination of current factors that gets a “win” to change the position on allowing foreign troops actively deployed in Ireland, the Government simply won’t win such a vote and would likely fall if it even tried, and I don’t think London or anyone else wants a Shinner led government instead which is the likely result of such a political suicide action.

          There are improved systems already in service, the DF socials showed off one of the new Giraffe X systems, though what its tied to and whether the new French MANPADS is another question.

          • If the people don’t agree then don’t ask foreigners for help and shaft them.
            You are making impossible for the Royal Navy to make an effective work.

            Maybe the T45 or T23 frigate can be designated as a boat full of refugees. Some sailors may ask for refugee status conveniently….

  25. serious. again cant trust them early days nato not be a priority usa im hopefull grab air base over ireland there are tensions over donald couple reasons. nato accounts alot of training alertness bit costly need planes not surfice to air eyes on warnings this is stupid

  26. thats just my strategy like get them patrol skies sort recruiting abroad small army detactment rainbow divison scale bk on bases gateway into europe still all good chaps alot merky spy stuff go down probly a pipe dream obviously not my way but im not the leader so

  27. It is quite amusing that the EU thinks its appropriate to fine countries which refuse “Asylum” seekers and yet there is no penalty for not contributing to the defence of the bloc

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