The Opposition is calling for clarity on whether €450 million in levies on government departments will lead to spending promises being shelved.
Government met on Tuesday morning to discuss the possibility of further sanctions on departments that cannot stick to their budget. It comes against the backdrop of line Ministers being told in recent weeks they would have to find hundreds of millions in levies to pay for an overspend at the Department of Education.
Some departments have areas of spending that are protected – such as public pay, pensions or spending on housing. This means the range of levies being imposed is 0.1-1.4 per cent of estimated current expenditure allocations for 2027.
Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman said today there was a possibility the levies could “represent cuts in public spending in 2026″.
READ MORE
He called on the Government to give clarity “on where these cuts are going to fall”.
“Are we going to see promises like the €200-a-month childcare – is that going to be shelved? Is it going to impact on the cost of disability payments that this Government have committed to?” he asked. “Are we going to see further reductions in funding for public housing? Will social housing developments be further impacted?”
O’Gorman, who was a cabinet minister in the 2020-2024 coalition, denied he was partially responsible for a breakdown in spending discipline within State departments, arguing that massive interventions were justified by the Covid-19 pandemic and cost-of-living crises.
He also criticised comments by Fianna Fáil in particular, accusing Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan of “veering dramatically out of his own lane” for discussing the possibility of income tax cuts for higher earners.
“It’s extremely difficult to expect members of the public, when they’re seeing the very real surpluses that are being generated right now, to expect them to take a hit in the particular programme that supports them, which supports their particular family,” he said.
“It’s also very hard for people to hear about levies on programmes right now when you have another part of Government saying we’re actually going to cut tax for the most well-off in our society,” he said.
Labour Party TD Marie Sherlock said she is “desperately concerned” at the planned spending controls warning they could “store up much bigger problems further down the line”.
She said her party raised serious concerns at the time of the budget last October about the budget being allocated for health given the level of demand and demographics pointing to “significant increases being required”.
Sherlock continued that spending controls being put in place now will “store up much bigger problems further down the line and particularly in health we’ve seen obviously the recruitment freeze reintroduced”.
She also argued that a proposal to levy other Government departments to help plug a hole in the Department of Education’s budget is “outrageous frankly.”
Sherlock said: “It is a tax on the departments that are actually managing their own budgets and it also a desperately poor reflection on the Department of Finance and on the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.”
People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett said his party wanted to “ring the alarm bells” about the proposals to curb Government expenditure and he accused Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers of a “game of divide and conquer”, claiming Government departments and requirements for public spending were being set against the needs of children with special needs.
Solidarity TD Ruth Coppinger, who was present at the press conference with Boyd Barrett and is a member of the Oireachtas Committee on Education said it is correct to say that not all of the overspend related to special needs education.
She said the committee has not yet been provided with a breakdown of the overspend.
“Some of it is wages, salaries which is obviously a lot of any Budget. But still the message is kind of filtering out there and being taken up to mean that it is for additional needs.”
