{"id":446317,"date":"2026-05-13T07:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T07:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/446317\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T07:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T07:21:08","slug":"cabinet-discussed-stricter-department-spending-controls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/446317\/","title":{"rendered":"Cabinet discussed stricter department spending controls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Cabinet has discussed implementing stricter spending curbs on Government departments ahead of October&#8217;s Budget with fresh sanctions for overspending departments.<\/p>\n<p>Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers sought approval for the introduction of much stricter spending controls to tackle department overruns.<\/p>\n<p>The move follows a decision by the Government last month to impose an efficiency levy on all other departments to account for a \u20ac600m overrun in the Department of Education.<\/p>\n<p>There are also spending concerns around the Department of Health with the HSE \u20ac250m over budget after the first quarter of the year.<\/p>\n<p>Offending departments will lose the autonomy to make spending decisions &#8211; including the hiring of staff up to principal officer level &#8211; without getting prior approval from the Department of Public Expenditure; which may refuse to support any new expenditure measures where there are overruns.<\/p>\n<p>Overspending departments will also face closer supervision from officials at the Department of Expenditure through the establishment of budgetary oversight groups.<\/p>\n<p>The enhanced cost controls are contained in a new expenditure escalation process outlined by Minister Chambers at the Cabinet meeting.<\/p>\n<p>He told Cabinet colleagues that against the backdrop of profound global economic uncertainty, it is essential departments adhere to their agreed budgetary allocations.<\/p>\n<p>Government departments have already been told they may have to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/news\/politics\/2026\/0510\/1572645-government-departments-spending\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">reduce their expected spending this year by between 0.1% and 1.4% as a result of the increased financial demands on the Department of Education.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Minister Chambers has rejected suggestions the recent levy or the new curbs will cause tension within the coalition, telling RT\u00c9&#8217;s This Week on Sunday that there is collective agreement on the spending plans.<\/p>\n<p alt=\"Minister Jack Chambers on budgetary overruns\" class=\"tpe\" data-description=\"The Government has a recurring problem with budgetary overruns. Last year, overspending amounted to \u20ac4.1 billion. Already this year Education needs an extra 646m, while the HSE is 250m over for the first three months of the year. Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Jack Chambers joined Paul now in studio to discuss the way forward.\" data-embed=\"rte-player\" data-id=\"22611114\" data-ot-category=\"C0004\" data-title=\"The Government has a recurring problem with budgetary overruns. Last year, overspending amounted to \u20ac4.1 billion. Already this year Education needs an extra 646m, while the HSE is 250m over for the first three months of the year. Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Jack Chambers joined Paul now in studio to discuss the way forward.\">We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.<a class=\"blocked-button\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/news\/politics\/2026\/0512\/1572871-cabinet-politics\/javascript:void(0);\" onclick=\"OneTrust.ToggleInfoDisplay()\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Manage Preferences<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Cabinet has discussed implementing stricter spending curbs on Government departments ahead of October&#8217;s Budget with fresh sanctions&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":446318,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-446317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=446317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/446318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=446317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=446317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=446317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}