Their comments came amid the latest gathering of senior EU leaders in Brussels, where issues on defence, Ukraine, migration, and union-wide competitiveness are on the table.

Their previous gathering, in the wake of the disastrous meeting between Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and US president Donald Trump, saw defence take top billing.

It saw broad agreement, with EU leaders backing the early stages of an €800bn proposal from the European Commission to rearm Europe, which has since turned into a new white paper on defence.

However, this summit may have come almost too early for any major discussions on the white paper on defence, with a senior government source highlighting how the document itself had only been published 24 hours previously.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin described the document itself as “significant”, but a senior government source has cautioned that Ireland needs more time to sink its teeth into it. There may just not have been enough time for leaders to digest it.

Despite this, some Irish officials working in the EU have been surprised at the speed the Commission has moved on defence, highlighting the glacial pace of previous major reforms.

The paper itself includes proposals that would allow for joint procurement of major military hardware, to which one senior government source said that Ireland has not ruled out involvement.

“We haven’t said no,” they said.

However, they did raise that Ireland is already moving towards increases in defence spending, with Tánaiste Simon Harris laying the groundwork towards level of ambition three – “Developing full spectrum defence capabilities to protect Ireland and its people to an extent comparable to similar sized countries in Europe” — as set out in the Commission on the Defence Forces.

There is also hope within the Government that Irish companies can get themselves involved in this defence procurement. This could see some get a boost through equipment sales, as countries move towards acquiring military equipment within the union.

It may be that Ireland does not need to concern itself massively with the EU’s overall defence plans, but it will be worth working alongside partners in areas such as cybersecurity and maritime — particularly given the spectre of cyberattacks or disruption to key undersea cables.

This is more important given fact Ireland is struggling to float its own ships in the sea, with the number of patrol days carried out by the naval service being halved over the last five years.

What became more clear over the course of the day were the dwindling prospects of the so-called “Kallas plan”.

Devised by the EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, it would see massive amounts of military aid provided to Ukraine from Europe’s coffers, potentially rising as high as €40bn.

Funds put into the pot by member states would have been based on their gross national income, where countries would provide monies based on the performance of their economies.

This would have seen fair contributions for smaller states, but concerns arose from larger economies such as France and Italy over the significant funding they would be required to provide.

Ireland itself could have been required to provide as much as €1bn, but when pressed on this the Taoiseach declined to speculate.

Signals emerged on Thursday evening that the plan had more or less been frozen, after it became clear that no progress would be made that day.

Ms Kallas admitted earlier in the day that a more realistic plan in the short-term would be to provide Ukraine with €5bn worth of ammunition, which Mr Zelenskyy himself raised during his speech to gathered leaders.

But it will likely be disappointing for Ukrainians to see such a large amount of funding put on ice, given the possibility of further pauses of US aid if ceasefire talks do not go as planned.

While the Kallas plan appears stalled, European leaders remain behind Mr Zelenskyy but are staying skeptical of ongoing US efforts to forge a peace between Russia and Ukraine.

They spoke of the “state of play” of ongoing talks, but a senior EU official outlined a “shared view that no real negotiations are taking place at the moment” — a strong rebuke of the Trump-led talks, which has seen the US president ping-pong between calls with Russia and Ukraine.

Mr Zelenskyy has called for EU leaders to keep the pressure on Moscow, saying that the Kremlin is likely to drop its promises at the drop of a hat.

But keeping pressure on Mr Trump is just another challenge for an EU that is changing quickly and whose challenges are mounting.