Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers is facing a ministerial backlash over his plans to tighten spending discipline and introduce levies to pay for cost overruns in the Department of Education.
The Fianna Fáil Minister briefed Cabinet on Tuesday on a plan for escalating “expenditure-control measures”, to be enacted when a department goes beyond its budget.
He told Ministers spending is already up by 8.9 per cent this year, above the six per cent targeted annually by the Coalition.
Under the plans, departments that exceed their budget could see new oversight groups – staffed by officials from Chambers’s department – brought in to supervise them.
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Chambers could also refuse to support memos to Government from over-spending departments, or withhold sanction for spending decisions normally delegated to the department in question.
One Minister, speaking privately, complained of “diktats” being handed down which they said were “going down like a lead balloon”. Another agreed that the steps taken were going down badly.
This view was mirrored by several other sources across Government, with the Departments of Agriculture, of Higher Education and of Culture said to be particularly aggrieved.
One Government source said the levy was akin to punishing departments which stay inside their budget, adding: “Jack (Chambers) just doesn’t seem to care, everyone suffers now especially the ones that have behaved.”
A source close to Chambers pointed to collective Cabinet responsibility and said it was essential budgets are managed within agreed allocations. “Departments who manage budgets sensibly, prioritise and drive reform won’t be impacted by the new measures,” this source said.
Minister for Further and Higher Education James Lawless is said to have voiced concerns at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting. It is believed he argued that some departments are bound by national agreements like pay deals but are being given no extra resources to fund them – yet will be held responsible for overruns which arise from implementing government policy.
Meanwhile, Minister of State Emer Higgins is said to have told Cabinet during Tuesday’s discussion that the Department of Public Expenditure’s processes can be slow to come back to other departments.
Under the terms of the levy, some departments have areas of public spending that are protected – such as public pay, pensions or spending on housing. This means the range of levies being imposed is between 0.1-1.4 per cent of estimated current expenditure allocations for 2027.
Despite the private unhappiness among some Ministers, the Cabinet has already agreed the levies, meaning they will proceed. But frustration with Chambers’s department is deepening, a third Cabinet source said, suggesting that senior officials in other Government departments were also frustrated.
Government spokesmen said on Tuesday they had not been made aware of any dissenting views offered at Cabinet when it discussed the measures.
Opposition politicians are querying whether the levy would mean lower levels of funding for key schemes.
Asked whether there would be an impact on Government programmes, a Coalition spokesman said that was a “hypothetical” question, adding there was “no talk about any cutbacks on any plans”. He said amid inflationary pressure, the Government was going to “control the controllables” and emphasised there was a whole-of-Government approach to managing cost overruns.
A senior Government source said the reforms had not led to divisions at the top of the Coalition. They said the Taoiseach and Tánaiste were aligned on the need to keep spending discipline in order to meet programme for government commitments.
