{"id":668709,"date":"2026-09-02T12:30:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T12:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/668709\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T12:30:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T12:30:18","slug":"impact-of-levy-to-cover-education-spending-overrun-bemoaned-by-department-of-enterprise-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/668709\/","title":{"rendered":"Impact of levy to cover education spending overrun bemoaned by Department of Enterprise \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A levy introduced to recoup some of a \u20ac640 million education overspend will have \u201cimplications\u201d across the Department of Enterprise, its Minister, Peter Burke<\/a>, has warned. <\/p>\n

It emerged earlier this year that Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers <\/a>is to try to claw back some of the spending overrun through a \u20ac446 million levy on other departments.<\/p>\n

Ministers were given until July 17th to tell the Department of Public Expenditure what efficiencies and reforms they were considering to save money.<\/p>\n

Burke warned Chambers he would not be able to save \u20ac8 million this year \u201cthrough efficiency measures alone\u201d and that the full impact of the levy would not be clear until after Budget 2027 is announced next month. <\/p>\n

The Department of Enterprise said it is \u201cnot possible to link a reduction of \u20ac8 million in current funding to efficiencies and reforms alone\u201d and that a \u201creduction in current expenditure will be required to reduce the overall current budget\u201d.<\/p>\n

Several Ministers shared details of their savings plans in response to a series of questions from Sinn F\u00e9in spokeswoman on public expenditure Mair\u00e9ad Farrell<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Burke said his department was discussing proposals with the Department of Public Expenditure on how the levy demand could be met.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, given the scale of the levy, it is expected that its implementation will have implications for expenditure across the vote. The final package of measures will be agreed through the estimates process,\u201d Burke said.<\/p>\n

The Department of An Taoiseach is facing a levy of 1.4 per cent on its budget, with Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin <\/a>saying pay and related costs were its main expense. Martin said new areas of work would be met with existing resources and the recruitment of new staff would mainly be done through secondment arrangements.<\/p>\n

His department also expects to save more than \u20ac500,000 through the winding down of the Covid-19 evaluation at the end of this year. The independent inquiry had received annual funding of about \u20ac1 million.<\/p>\n

\"\"Where next for Simon, Miche\u00e1l and Mary Lou?<\/p>\n

Minister for Finance Simon Harris said his department is expecting to make some savings from the end of Ireland\u2019s presidency of the Council of the European Union. He said any potential impact on public services as a result of the levy would be \u201coffset against the efficiencies and reforms identified\u201d.<\/p>\n

Chambers said his department was planning to save money by suppressing a number of roles and cutting spending on \u201cpolicy reviews, consultancy services and research\u201d.<\/p>\n

Minister for Housing James Browne said his department would be able to meet its \u20ac5 million levy \u201cwithout significant impact on the delivery of critical services\u201d. He said his department would invest more in Government or NGO-owned emergency accommodation in an attempt to save money on private providers.<\/p>\n

Farrell said she believed the imposition of the levy was a \u201cclear return to austerity\u201d and the cuts involved were unnecessary and unworkable.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese cuts should be abandoned immediately, and the Minister should commit to allocating the necessary funding to rebuild our public services after years of neglect by successive Fianna F\u00e1il and Fine Gael governments,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A levy introduced to recoup some of a \u20ac640 million education overspend will have \u201cimplications\u201d across the Department…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668710,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,4771,553,6,19,17,26736,11,12,15,16,5,4772,47,7,8],"class_list":["post-668709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-fianna-fail","tag-fine-gael","tag-headlines","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-jack-chambers","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-peter-burke","tag-sinn-fein","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117201458695475467","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668709\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}