Departmental Expenditure
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-07
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Mairéad Farrell (SF), Galway West

Just for clarity, did the Minister commit to publishing them? Maybe he can come back on that. I genuinely mean that I did not fully understand that.
When the Minister drafted these measures, he was presumably aware the Department of education was not the only one in the red. It turns out the Departments of health, justice and social protection are also on track to overspend by millions of euro. In the case of social protection, the Minister has asked it to make €6 million of cuts - an impossible ask for a Department with a projected €89 million overspend. Similarly, he slashed the health budget by €175 million despite the HSE projecting a €400 million overspend. I do not understand his taking an axe to our public services because of the failure of the last budget, which became clear in the budgetary oversight committee, as well as because the sums did not add up on budget day. Will the Minister commit to publishing them? Will he tell us what he is cutting?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-07/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-07