Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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315. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the expenditure allocated to demographics under the Summer Economic Statement, disaggregated by Department. [39462/22]

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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Under the approach set out in last year’s Summer Economic Statement, 3% of the core current expenditure base is being set aside each year to meet Existing Levels of Service or ELS costs. These include costs arising from demographic pressures in areas such as Social Protection, Health and Education as well as the carryover costs from measures already introduced in prior year Budgets and public service pay commitments under existing pay deals.

The updated budgetary strategy for the period to 2025 was set out in the 2022 Summer Economic Statement, published earlier this month. Provision for meeting these ELS costs has been included under the amount shown as ‘budgetary decisions’ in Table 1 of the document. This amount also includes increased core capital spending as set out under the National Development Plan.

The division of the available resources under this 3% provision between the areas covered by ELS, including demographics, will be examined and allocated at Department level as part of the Estimates process and published in the Expenditure Report.