Irish tech firms pivot to defence as EU re-arms

Irish Times

28-04-2025

Europe's rush to beef up defence capabilities has opened a lucrative market in security technology for Ireland, despite its neutrality.
Irish scale-up companies in radar, artificial intelligence (AI) and surveillance tech are pivoting to new opportunities in defence and security and seeking to cash in on the EU's huge spending splurge in the sector, prompted by US warnings that it will not protect its allies forever.
'Demand has always been difficult to crystallise but the market is there much more now,' said Fintan Buckley, co-founder and chief executive of Ubotica Technologies, which uses AI-enabled satellites to track dark vessels and other threats in real time.
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Ireland is not a Nato member, has the EU's smallest defence budget and has no plans to change its policy of neutrality. But the Defence Forces have a long tradition of taking part in international peacekeeping missions.
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The favourable tax regime which has helped attract some of the world's biggest tech companies, spawning local businesses and good jobs for skilled workers provides an opportunity to 'help with Europe's resilience', said Malcolm Byrne, Fianna Fáil's spokesman for innovation.
'We're 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,' he said.
Ireland's maritime area that it has to protect is seven times the size of its land mass and criss-crossed by transatlantic data cables facilitating internet activity, making cyber security a key issue.
An estimated three-quarters of cables in the northern hemisphere lie in or close to Irish waters, and Russian ships have repeatedly been found lurking nearby – as recently as this month. Yet the Naval Service can only deploy two ships on patrol at a time, with one on standby, as well as co-operating with the UK for air defence.
The Government has faced criticism from analysts and other nations for 'freeloading' in defence, especially considering its huge surplus at present.
Mark Mellett, a retired Irish Naval Service vice-admiral and a former chief of its defence forces, said there is an 'acknowledgment that Ireland has to lift its game'. Several niche Irish tech companies told the FT they had seen more interest from potential clients since Europe's move to boost military spending.
Safe-driving company Provizio makes sensors, using chips from US giant Nvidia, that prevent accidents by detecting obstacles. Its founder and chief executive Barry Lunn said interest in his technology has grown tenfold in the past couple of months, in part thanks to an emerging defence market, including identifying safe routes for military convoys and self-driving equipment. Lunn has been approached about military applications in the past, including for use with Ukrainian drones. But he had always declined. Now, 'we've started answering the door a bit more' to 'non-weaponry-based' queries, he said.
'Deep-tech needs money and what we do needs money – well then, you have to follow the money,' Lunn added.
Like the space AI company Ubotica, which Buckley said is 'having conversations with relevant government and other bodies in Europe', Lunn said Provizio is also talking to a 'number of larger companies' in Europe and the US about security uses for its technology.
VRAI, a Dublin-based company that uses AI to crunch data to train employees in the offshore wind industry and aviation, can also pivot its applications from the civilian to the military sphere, its chief executive Pat O'Connor said.
'We're not a defence company, we just happen to have a lot of demand coming at us from the aerospace, defence, security sector as well,' he said. 'The opportunity is clear ... We [in Ireland] could be the leaders in the area of dual-use technology.'
Underwater imaging company Cathx Ocean, whose AI-enhanced analysis has slashed the time needed to survey critical seabed infrastructure for companies such as oil major BP, says a third of its business is already focused on protection and security.
'It's definitely a growth industry,' said chief executive Adrian Boyle, noting the underwater autonomous vehicle market was already expected to increase by 20 per cent in the next four or five years.
That forecasts was 'before any of the current changes happened', he said. 'It could move much bigger than that.'
Green Rebel, a company based in Cork near Ireland's southern coast, uses robot submarines across Europe to map and monitor the seabed including for offshore wind infrastructure.
Deploying more Irish tech 'would go a long way to reassuring the rest of the European Union that we're doing something productive in this area', said its director of science and new markets Jared Peters.
'It's a great way to bridge the gap between being a neutral country but not being defenceless.' – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2025