Departmental Expenditure
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-16
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Mairéad Farrell (SF), Galway West

My question is where exactly the cuts will be. The reality is that these cuts are the direct result of the Government's decisions. Anybody who read the budget book at the last budget will know that the sums do not add up. We know that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments have underbudgeted and overspent for years and this Government is the exact same. Budget after budget, the Government failed to allocate the necessary funding for essential public services and relied upon Supplementary Estimates to cover its back. This overspend is not exceptional; these things seem to happen every year under the Minister's watch. Yet, the Minister has decided to scrap the practice of using Supplementary Estimates to cover overspends. To be honest, I think that is quite shortsighted. It also shows the poor budgeting that we have seen. I have never seen anything like the last budget, to be perfectly honest. The public deserves to know exactly where those cuts are going to come into effect.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-16/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-16