Ireland currently does not possess armed drones, ‘nor [are] there any plans to procure such equipment’, said the Irish Minister of Defense Alan Shatter in 2015 in response to a questionnaire by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) on European positions on armed drones and targeted killings.
However, Ireland’s Defense Forces have operated unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as an information-gathering asset since 2007. These surveillance drones were part of the EU-mission to Chad and the Central African Republic. The use of these drones remains limited, though, and the last time they were deployed overseas was in April 2010.
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