Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 2 May 2024
130. Deputy Pearse Doherty asked the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform to provide a breakdown of the non-core expenditure allocation of €4.5 billion, which includes provision for Covid-related spending primarily in health, costs relating to accommodating and supporting beneficiaries of temporary protection from Ukraine and expenditure related to EU funds, disaggregated by programme type. [20095/24]
View answerSince the onset of Brexit the Government has had to cater for unforeseen external events and make room for significant expenditure on these challenges within the overall government expenditure ceiling. As the Deputy knows, this was done through the use of what was termed non-core expenditure.
Non-core expenditure has proved a useful approach to expenditure policy as it provided flexibility to respond to external shocks while protecting core, day-to-day investment in public services. Separating the two categories prevented the non-core from being subsumed into the annual core allocations. It is the intention of the government to wind down such expenditure as it is no longer needed as evidenced by the steep fall Covid related spending from €15.4 billion to €1.3 billion to this year.
In Budget 2024 a total of €4.5 billion was provided for non-core expenditure and subsequently allocated to Departments in the Revised Estimates for Public Services based on the requirements of line Departments.
The provision of this sum will, of course, be subject to the normal budgetary monitoring processes by my Department and assessed for over or underspends as happens with core expenditure. The present allocations for the funding is as follows;
• €2.6 billion for Ukraine related expenditure;
• €1.3 billion for Covid related expenditure;
• €0.3 billion for EU Funds and Brexit related expenditure;
• €0.3 billion for other non-core expenditure.
Taking into account the uncertainty in relation to the war in Ukraine and the trend in expenditure over the recent past, a contingency reserve of €4.5 billion from 2025 to 2027 was included in the recent Stability Programme Update.
