Ministry by ministry

A budget is a ceiling. Parliament votes how much each ministry may spend, and a ministry cannot go above it. Nothing obliges it to reach it.

What the numbers say

Four ministries account for more than half of the money: Education with €1.51 billion spent in 2025, Finance with €1.49 billion, Health with €1.35 billion and Labour with €0.90 billion. The smallest, the deputy ministry of Shipping, spent €15 million.

Together the ministries spent €9,424 million of a final budget of €10,255 million, which is 92%. Not one of them went over its final budget.

The gap is not spread evenly. The largest ministries came closest: Labour spent 98%, Health 96%, Education 95%, Defence 95%. The furthest short were Migration at 71%, Tourism at 78%, and Energy and Shipping at 82%.

In euro the largest unspent amounts were at Finance, €128 million, Interior, €98 million, Social Welfare, €79 million, and Agriculture, €73 million.

These figures leave out interest on the debt and loan repayments, which sit in the same budget but are not a ministry's choice.

What it means for you

When you read that a ministry "gets" a sum in the budget, read it as the most it can spend. In 2025 the typical ministry spent about nine tenths of that.

Unspent money is not lost and not saved in a jar. It was never collected for that purpose or never borrowed, and it shows up as a better balance for the state at the end of the year. What is lost is the thing the money was for: a road section not built, a scheme not opened, a post not filled.

The budget bill for 2027 gives the ministries €11.16 billion, 4.4% more than was voted for 2026. Most of the increase goes to one place: Defence rises by €267 million, or 42%. Education rises by €89 million and Health by €48 million. Energy is cut by 31%, and Tourism and Migration by about a fifth.

What people argue

Is underspending good management or failure? A finance minister can present a budget that came in under the ceiling as discipline, and the surplus it helps produce is real. The Treasury's own report shows where the gap comes from: salaries and pensions were 96% spent and social benefits 95%, while development spending was 81% and projects co-financed by the EU 80%. The shortfall is in building and projects. Promised and delivered follows that through 2026.

Why does a ministry's budget change during the year? Mostly because money is moved between ministries; supplementary budgets voted by Parliament were small in 2025. The Finance ministry's budget as first voted holds a reserve for unforeseen spending, €212 million in 2025, and a pool of EU co-financing money for projects run by others. During the year €170 million of the reserve and about €190 million of the co-financing money were moved out. Those two explain most of the fall in Finance's budget from €1,966 million as voted to €1,621 million by the end, while most others rose. Five of the rows in the chart spent more than they were first voted and still less than their final budget.

Why did each ministry fall short? Neither the budget documents nor the Treasury's annual report gives a reason ministry by ministry. We have not guessed.

How we know

The figures are from the summary of expenditure by head in the 2027 budget bill, which prints what was spent in 2025, and from the Treasury's Financial Report for 2025, which prints the final budget after changes. The two sources agree on what was spent.

They are on a cash basis and cover what the Ministry of Finance calls primary expenditure: current and development spending, without interest, loan repayments and purchases of shares. This is the state budget, not the wider general government that most of this site uses, so it leaves out the Social Insurance and GESY funds and local authorities.

The six deputy ministries are shown separately. "Independent services" and the constitutional offices are grouped as the budget groups them.