Minister Donohoe publishes Mid-Year Expenditure Report 2024

The Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, Paschal Donohoe TD, today (Thursday 8 August) published the Mid-Year Expenditure Report (MYER) 2024 – an important document in the annual budget cycle. The MYER 2024 outlines the expenditure trends and gross voted expenditure of €47.1 billion for the first half of this year, provides context for planned expenditure in Budget 2025 and highlights a range of impacts and outcomes of the current expenditure policy.

The 2024 MYER illustrates the implementation of Budget 2024 from January to June. This

included measures such as:

• Social Protection rate increases of €12 on weekly rates to all working age and pension payments.
• Further reductions in childcare costs through the National Childcare Scheme.
• Supports to primary and post primary schools, while investing significant resources in special education, with additional investment in further and higher education.
• Increased capital investment under our National Development Plan.

Spending also included supports towards the external global challenges our society has faced, with measures to assist with cost of living pressures and our humanitarian response to the war in Ukraine, as well as some legacy Covid-19 funding.

Publication of the MYER follows that of the Summer Economic Statement (SES) last month, which set out the economic and fiscal conditions for Budget 2025 preparations. The MYER provides detail on the expenditure strategy set out in the SES, which will see €105.4 billion in total voted spending, including €4.5 billion under the contingency reserve. It outlines the parameters that will support significant investment in our infrastructure through the National Development Plan, delivering a greener, more efficient and innovative economy, building homes and schools and providing better public services to support our growing and changing population. Taking into account demands for better quality health care, the complexity of providing health services – particularly in the acute sector – and the legacy impact of a post pandemic and heightened inflationary environment, Government is also providing an additional €1.5 billion in funding for the health service this year.

The expenditure ceiling for 2025 reflects an increase of €6.9 billion or 6.9%. This builds on the progress made in the Government’s previous budgets and highlights Government’s commitment to providing for high quality public services and better societal outcomes, in a manner consistent with a fiscally sustainable expenditure strategy. Given this level of spending, it is essential to ensure that the strategy is delivering better outcomes and providing value for money. In this context, the MYER provides an update on the ongoing work on Embedding Evaluation and Better Public Service Delivery and highlights some of the key areas where the increased investment in public services and infrastructure is delivering improved services, supporting productivity and economic growth, and future proofing towards future challenges:

• Increased investment in our school's education sector provides educational services to almost 973,000 children and young people enrolled in schools, supported by almost 77,000 allocated teaching positions and 20,800 SNAs, along with other non-teaching staff in schools.
• A significant increase in investment in early learning and childcare to record levels of over €1 billion in 2023, which is supporting the delivery of schemes, including Core Funding, the National Childcare Scheme, the Early Childhood Care and Education programme, the Access and Inclusion Model and Equal Start.
• Rollout of the Sláintecare reform programme, which has driven a number of policy changes aiming to reduce patient cost, expand service eligibility and increase access to treatments.
• Social transfers through our welfare system reduced the at-risk-of-poverty rate by 18 percentage points in the 2023 Survey on Income and Living Conditions, the highest reduction of any European Union country.
• Under the NDP, the delivery of housing and utilities continues with robust performance with almost 52,000 units commenced in the 12-month period June 2023 to May 2024 and hundreds of kilometers of water network laid last year.

Commenting on the publication of the MYER, Minister Donohoe said:

ENDS