Departmental Budgets
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-24
============================================================

Jerry Buttimer (FG), Cork South-Central

I thank Deputy Farrelly for the question. The application of the €18 million expenditure levy is currently forming part of the 2027 Estimates negotiations process under way with our colleagues in the Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation. It is fair to say that it will be challenging to absorb this levy into our current expenditure budget for 2027. The Deputy has been a long-time advocate of increasing services of his area of Kildare. As he knows, the PSO expenditure accounts for around 70% of the current Vote, as the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, has just said. What that means for the House is that reforms in motor tax, modernisations listed in the national vehicle and driver file and the road traffic Bill 2026 will generate some savings. Once the relevant provisions of the Bill are enacted, they will remove the requirement to display a paper motor tax disc, therefore reducing the Department’s administrative costs by approximately €8 million per annum.
It is important to say to the House that priority will be given to protecting the PSO funding as part of our budget 2027 negotiations to advance the progress that we have achieved in recent years and to ensure that we deliver a public transport system that is not just sustainable, but also dependable, accessible and affordable.
In response to Deputy Daly, we are ambitious. We want to see services expanded and we want to work with people in all parts of the country and with all colleagues across the House to ensure we deliver for people in terms of accessible public transport.

---

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/2026-09-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:50+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-24