Minister for Education Hildegarde Naughton has confirmed her department is facing a deficit of more than €500 million this year, amid ongoing tensions in Government about how to tackle the issue.
Speaking on RTÉ on Tuesday morning, Naughton said the deficit was “north” of €500 million but insisted that extra money was needed to pay for the State’s education system.
Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers has already indicated that other departments’ budgets could be raided to pay for the deficit in education, with discussions between officials ongoing on the matter.
Naughton, who was addressing teaching union conferences on Tuesday, said that when she was appointed to her role last November it was clear to her that the department was underfunded.
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She said she needed to make sure that schools and teachers were “adequately resourced” and that her department was “properly funded to do that”.
Later, she told reporters: “We need to make sure that we are getting the foundations right and that requires funding.”
She said: “These are conversations I’m having within Government and I need to make sure that that structural deficit is addressed because it was very clear to me when I came into this role that the department was underfunded and it’s really important we get that base right.”
Chambers is said to be drawing up proposals for an expenditure levy on other departments to fund the Department of Education deficit, set to be concluded in the next couple of weeks.
Speaking on Tuesday, Chambers said there was a “challenge” in the department’s budget, notwithstanding increases. He said this was only partially due to new demand, but that expenditure pressures in one department would have implications in others.
“It will limit the level of what’s available for other government departments” if more money was allocated to education, he said. He added there had been a 10 per cent increase in funding for the area this year.
Senior sources across Government are in agreement that the deficit must be accounted for and that extra money will be needed for the department. There are also programme-for-government commitments on the provision of special care, school transport and other matters.
Plans had been discussed to spread efforts to bring the deficit under control over several years, with some “new” money allocated on budget day given over to the cost of maintaining existing services rather than used to fund expanded services.
However, the pace at which this is to be done is yet to be agreed – with one source saying the Department of Public Expenditure (DPER) now wants more money to be put into addressing the deficit in a shorter period.
Government sources have said that the current projected overspend in education is estimated at €600 million to €700 million this year. In previous years, such overspending has been addressed – in education and elsewhere – by the allocation of extra money outside of the budgetary cycle, known as a supplementary estimate.
However, the current Government has decided to abolish this practice and stick to its agreed spending plans, which has contributed to the impasse between DPER and their counterparts in the Department of Education.
The new approach ruling out in-year cash injections for departments was agreed by the Coalition when it introduced a new medium-term fiscal plan last December, which promised to keep spending growth to 6 per cent over the next four years.
