Departmental Expenditure Dail Éireann — 2026-07-07 ============================================================ Jack Chambers (FF), Dublin West We should have greater discussion in here around efficiencies and reforms across all expenditure lines. No Department is immune from driving greater efficiencies and improving productivity, outputs and impacts in the context of a significant increase in public expenditure in recent years. Notwithstanding the levy we have introduced to moderate overall expenditure, there should be greater focus on that in the wider discussions and demands we receive across expenditure allocations. The reason we are doing this is to fit the additionality we have provided to education within the wider fiscal framework. I believe we distributed it fairly. We protected health pay, protected social protection rates and the wider social protection budget, protected justice pay and protected key front-line areas in education itself. There is room for efficiencies across Departments that have grown significantly in recent years. --- 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/2026-07-07/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-07