The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has been asked to provide up to €26 million next year.
This comes at a time when Public Expenditure Minister Jack Chambers confirmed the fees that will be applied to government departments after excess spending on education.
In response to parliamentary questions from Social Democrat TD Sian O’Callaghan and Labor TD Jed Nash, Minister Chambers confirmed that the proposed levy to be applied to the Department of Agriculture was 1.3%.
Levi
Minister Chambers said the government agreed in April to “provide additional funding of €646 million to the Department of Education and Youth in 2026”.
“To accommodate this reprioritization and achieve the 2027 ceiling agreed under the Medium-Term Fiscal Structural Plan (MTFP), other departments have been asked to introduce a levy focused on efficiency and reforms which will total €446 million as of 2027,” he said.
“This should be viewed through the lens of an overall €7 billion increase in spending in 2027,” Minister Chambers added.
He said the fees would not affect the 2026 allocations allocated to departments.
The range of “efficiency to be found” ranges from 0.02% to 1.4% in financing recurrent expenditures for 2026.
Minister Chambers said the distribution of the levy across departments was “designed to protect certain areas” including housing, wages, pensions and specialist disability services.
Warm
The Ministry of Agriculture has a total allocated budget of €2.3 billion for 2026.
This represents an increase of €170 million, or 9%, over 2025 and includes €1.967 billion in recurrent expenditures and a capital program of €335 million.
A DAFM spokesperson said Agriland: “The Department of Public Expenditure, Infrastructure, Public Service Reform and Digitization has written to this Department regarding the proposed expenditure tax to be implemented in 2027.”
They added, “The proposed tax will be based on the allocation of the ministry’s current expenditures for the year 2026, with capital expenditures exempted from the tax. The tax is scheduled to be implemented in 2027.”
Based on the DAFM’s current spending allocations for this year, this means that the Department will have to identify savings of €25.6 million for 2027.
Minister Chambers said it was up to each department to identify “efficiencies and reforms”, adding “this will form a key element in sharing estimates for the 2027 Budget”.
“It is up to each administration to determine how the tax will be implemented across the electorate and identify the efficiencies and reforms required to ensure this,” he said.
