School Funding
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-11
============================================================

Michael Moynihan (FF), Cork North-West

The Government is committed to increasing funding to support schools and the programme for Government commits to increasing capitation funding to schools of all types to ensure they can meet day-to-day running costs. Schools have autonomy in their spending, allowing them to make decisions on spending independently at school level. The financial support services unit, FSSU, funded by the Department is an important source of advice and support to schools on financial matters, including budgeting and cash flow management. In circumstances where a school is in financial difficulty, the Department requests the FSSU to carry out an evaluation of the financial position in the school. The Department is committed to offering all available and appropriate supports to these schools, which may include an advance in capitation grant funding, or other measures, as may be appropriate. As a result of such evaluations, a small number of schools required an advance in capitation grant funding to be paid to address immediate cash flow issues. The Department continues to liaise with the FSSU regarding supports and guidance to all schools.
In the 2023-24 school year, 31 schools were referred to the unit and two received an advance in capitation grant funding. In the 2024-25 school year, 61 schools were referred to the FSSU and 17 received an advance in capitation grant funding. In the 2025-26 school year to date, 18 schools were referred to the FSSU and nine received an advance in capitation grant funding. The Department has secured €39 million in budget 2026 towards increased capitation funding for primary, post-primary and special schools. This will result in the standard rates increasing from €224 to €274 for primary schools and from €386 to €406 for post-primary schools. The increases in the budget are in addition to the 12% increases as part of budget 2025. The last three budgets have resulted in an increase in the level of capitation grant rates of almost 50% paid to primary schools and approximately 28% paid to post-primary schools.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-11/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-11