Hello all,
Perhaps a bit of context on this. We all see things through our own eyes, with our own perspective borne of experience and history. In that way, to some, Ireland is seen as freeloading on (insert NATO, UK, EU etc here depending on the conversation ). The unfortunate truth is that at several levels Ireland has a cultural blindspot when it comes to security and defence.
For example, one of the ways to identify a work group level culture is that the same decisions are made the same way over and over again. From this perspective, you can have very intelligent and capable people advising, hiring and creating policy within a very blinkered way of thinking. I would apply thisl to our civil service and politicians, including the Dept of Defence. One of the most revered civil servants in Irish history, T.K. Whitaker was recently revealed to having likened Defence policy to being a driver with no insurance or road tax - so long as we don't have an accident or meet the police we'd get away with it. This, as poor a take as it was, was at least a decision in terms of a policy. I'd argue that no real, critically examined and debated, decision on an externally facing defence policy has been made since then. It's been a case of 'we've always done it that way'. This may seem harsh on our civil service, but the larger truth is they, just like the DF, are drawn from the society they represent.
In that regard, the description of culture as being the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves is probably more appropriate. We've told ourselves some whoppers. For example, we've told ourselves that we are a peaceful people, to a level over and above others at least. This in a country that has seen, on this landmass, in the last century and a bit, the 1916 Rising, The War of Independence, The Civil War, ( short interlude for the 1930s where elements fought on both sides of the Spanish Civil War and the 1940s which were, I believe, fairly quiet ), the IRA Border Campaign of the 1950s and The Troubles. For all of these from independence on, see also the associated internal security measures, or read Soldiering Against Subversion by Dan Harvey for a better description than I can give. Externally, once Ireland had joined the UN, the DF external focus was always on overseas ops including actions in places such as Congo, Lebanon, Liberia, Wesern Sahara, Chad, Kosovo, Syria and alot more. Ask at home though and people won't put together the connection between peacekeeping or peace enforcement and soldiering or even having a military.
The other fairytale that we've told ourselves is that we're neutral, and this has been adopted by large parts of the country with an almost religious stance. The problem is we fail every test of neutrality. It's neither part of the constitution or legislation for a start, it's more of a continuing practice. Unfortunately, Ireland cannot pass the test of being able to deny it's own territory to a third party in someone eles conflict. And that's pretty much it, neutrality failure right there. As a policy, it may actually have made sense when originally conceived as a response to WWII ( not saying morally correct, but you're talking about a poor country at the time which had just emerged from a bitter civil war, with many of the same players still in the wings. Looking for more trouble wouldn't have been wise, especially when like it or not, siding with UK would have been problematic at the time).This also despite the large number of personnel who fought for the allies ( to keep it air related , google Wing Cmdr Brendan Finnucane), the existence of the Donegal Corridor providing for transit by Allied aircraft, the passing of weather information, sharing of some of the code breaking that was done by G2, the return in many cases of downed allied aircraft and combined plans with the UK to respond to a German invasion. Not participating, but also a poor effort at neutrality.
In the intervening decades however, neutrality has become identified as something it's not - a morally virtuous position, as opposed to a practial political stance. Neutrality has also been conflated with passivity to extent that the DF have been underfunded to breaking point. To simply suggest that we would have any kind of weapons is scandalous. There was mild outrage in the media a while ago when it was revealed ( in a social media post by the DF press office ) that Ireland had been firing Javelin missiles in the Glen of Imaal training area. The gist of the responses were something along the lines of 'our saintly peacekeepers wouldn't need such unpleasantries'. Look, I'm sure you could stack Javelin boxes high enough to make an orphanage, but they also are kinda important for force protection...
As regards high end expenditures like jets, radar etc, the security picture for decades was internally focused for very obvious reasons, with the Army , and specifically the infantry, being the service people saw most of on the streets. That's all still very much within living memory. So it's what the picture people have in their head consists of if you talk about defence or security. The follow on from that is that, if that threat is gone, then why do we need a DF when we could spend money on health, housing, homelessness etc? Any discussion on things like air policing is really only in the baby steps in the national media, so culturally it has a long way to go. Translate that into votes for DF friendly candidates and then onward into cabinet decisions when carving up the budget and then on from there into developing a capability. It won't happen quickly, and was unlikely to happen up till now, where at least an opposing and fact based view is easier to present to a wide audience.
It's against that background that you have to look at a the Commission on Defence recomendations as they were recently released. It's a minor miracle that conventional capabilities like monitoring our own airspace were mentioned at all, even if only in the third and highest Level of Ambition. It's already receiving backlash, even with the events of this week. However, you never know, it might be the starting point from which a real QRA capability can grow.
Anyway, TL/DR version - lease Gripens for ten years and see what happens.