‘Education overspend baked into department budget’ TDs to hear

Department of Education officials to appear at Dáil committee on budgetary oversight to discuss the supplementary €646m it requested in March

The Department of Education will tell TDs its 2026 budget is €14.1bn, broken down with €12.4bn in current expenditure and €1.7bn in capital expenditure. Picture: iStock

A €646m overspend at the Department of Education is now a permanent part of its budget, TDs will be told today.

Officials from the department will appear before the Oireachtas committee on budgetary oversight to discuss a supplementary payment of €646m it requested in March, where they will address what it describes as a longstanding structural deficit.

In its opening statement, the department will tell TDs that its 2026 budget is €14.1bn, broken down with €12.4bn in current expenditure and €1.7bn in capital expenditure. 

Of the current spending, €10.7bn goes on pay and pensions. This represents 86% of the current expenditure allocation, and it provides for more than 114,000 public sector employees and in excess of 50,000 retired employees.

Other departments to pay 

The Government has said that the shortfall in funding will be paid for by levying other departments, with the officials set to say that it is now baked into its budget.

The department will say that the additional spend will add base funding as well as additional SNAs, resources to accommodate additional children and young people with special educational needs, maintaining a “heavily subsidised” school transport system, enhanced supports for survivors of historical residential abuse, and meeting its public pay agreement obligations. 

The department will also say that the “majority” of the €3.4bn supplementary funding it has needed in recent years “included a number of post-budget decisions taken at government level”.

Pressures on third-level education 

Meanwhile, higher education minister James Lawless is to warn his Cabinet colleagues of pressures on third level due to an expected surge in student numbers in the coming years.

He will outline how full-time higher education enrolments are projected to increase by between 33,000 and 39,000 students by 2033/34, reaching up to 250,857 students, a growth of up to 19% on current levels.

This will have implications on funding requirements, investment, infrastructure planning and policy development across the higher education sector