Figure 1 below shows how much each party says they will spend per year over the next five years, and how this compares to what the outgoing coalition government budgetary documents say was planned over the same period just a month ago. This is for a measure of government spending called “gross voted expenditure” which is comprised of the – largely – central government department spending approved by a vote of the Dáil each year (hence the name).

It is not comprehensive, excluding much social welfare expenditure, EU budget contributions and the (“own-resource”) expenditure of government bodies including local authorities. But gross voted expenditure is the only aggregate measure of spending each of the three largest parties has provided information on (a big problem in itself which we’ll return to below).

Figure 1 plans for expenditure.

The dotted black line shows the outgoing government planned for spending on this measure to rise from €105.4 billion per year in 2025 to €136.6 billion per year in 2030: an increase of 29.6%, or €31.2 billion. This amounts to voted expenditure rising by just over 5% per year on average, roughly in line with the outgoing government’s stated (though never obeyed) fiscal rule.

A bite of the Apple

However, each of the three largest parties’ manifestos’ says they will increase gross voted expenditure faster than this. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil – whose coalition Government published plans just a month ago – now both say voted expenditure will rise to over €142 billion per year in 2030: an increase of 25.1% or €37 billion per year, almost €6 billion per year more than originally planned. Sinn Féin has promised to increase gross voted expenditure even further, to €154.5 billion per year in 2030: an increase of €49.1 billion per year or 45.5% by 2030.

Despite these very large differences in overall voted expenditure plans, the three parties say they will spend similar amounts on current (day-to-day) voted expenditure: €122-€125 billion per year by 2030, an increase of between €31 billion (Fianna Fáil) and €34 billion (Sinn Féin) per year from its forecast 2025 level.

Rather, the difference between the parties essentially lies in their plans for voted capital expenditure, that is spending on roads, infrastructure, housing etc. Figure 2 shows this for the three parties, with both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael largely sticking to the plan outlined in last month’s budget for voted capital spending to rise to about €20 billion per year by 2030. By contrast, Sinn Féin is proposing much larger and faster increases in capital spending, with their plan to increase this to almost €30 billion per year by 2030!

Figure 2.

But that’s not all. Each of the three parties is committing to spending the (~€14 billion of) funds arising from the Apple judgement of the Court of Justice of the European Union on capital expenditure over the next five years, with Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin also planning on spending the (~€3 billion) proceeds of AIB share sales. On top of this, Sinn Féin is planning on increasing non-voted capital expenditure – in particular, capital spending on housing by Approved Housing Bodies etc – by €9 billion a year.

The best way to compare the parties’ capital expenditure plans is therefore to consider what each party is saying they’ll spend over the period 2025-2030, as in Figure 3 below. This shows that while Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are planning to spend around €120 billion over the period (€15-20 billion more than the plans published a month ago), Sinn Féin is pledging to spend €170 billion: an enormous difference!

Figure 3

Given the economy is operating at (if not well above) capacity, this raises obvious questions about the ability of the next government to actually additional deliver additional infrastructure for all this extra spending. For example, there are already regular stories about shortages of construction and craft workers, with warnings this is already hampering efforts to increase the number of homes we are building.

Where are the extra workers going to come from to facilitate the huge increases in capital spending each party – but particularly Sinn Féin – is proposing? Migration?

Banning/taxing commercial offices or other unfavoured kinds of investment? How to manage this “conflict between the need for public investment and the constraints on investment” was the subject of an ESRI report earlier this year, and is something whatever parties are in government next will need to think very carefully about. Sadly, it isn’t evident that any have yet.

Non-voted capital expenditure

A caveat to this comparison of capital spending is that it doesn’t include non-voted capital expenditure commitments by Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael (although they are unlikely to change the qualitative pattern). Nevertheless, that omission points to a wider problem with the parties’ spending plans, namely that they are all silent about a large chunk of government spending: non-voted current expenditure.

As noted above, voted spending excludes much social welfare expenditure, EU budget contributions and the (“own-resource”) expenditure of government bodies including local authorities. In 2025, “total general government expenditure” – which includes these and some other components of spending – came to €131.3 billion, almost €26 billion (or 25%) more than the total voted government expenditure measure the three parties focus exclusively on. Ignoring such a large share of government expenditure suggests a lack of seriousness by all three parties in their approach to the public finances.

This lack of seriousness is also displayed in the cavalier way each party proposes to finance increased public expenditure: to bank on the glut of corporation tax receipts from a handful of US multinationals continuing indefinitely.

Economists have cautioned about the risks from this overreliance for many years, warnings that while acknowledged by (some) government Ministers have prompted only limited actions in response. For example, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council recently estimated that the government is “only saving half of the €11.5 billion of corporation tax windfalls it is collecting”, without which “Ireland would be in a large and growing deficit”.

The recent (re)election of Donald Trump as President of the United States may well represent the crystallisation of these risks, particularly with his expected nomination of Howard Lutnick and/or Robert Lighthizer to key economic positions in his administration. Both regard the fact that Ireland (or indeed any country) exports more goods to the United States than it imports as something to be remedied, with tariffs the instrument of choice.

While founded in a reductionist mercantilist logic, the antagonism of both to the activities of US multinationals in Ireland is in other ways very understandable. Much of the activity of these firms in the pharmaceutical and technology sectors amounts to shifting profits to Ireland to avoid paying taxes in the United States (largely the result of US laws rather than Irish laws in my opinion, but that’s beside the point).

We should not therefore be surprised if an “America First” administration takes action to cajole or coerce US multinationals to relocate production (and/or profits) back to the US.

This could quite easily adversely affect the flows of foreign direct investment that have done so much to improve economic prospects in this country, not to mention the corporation tax receipts that underpin the parties’ spending plans.

Not that you would know this from the promises the three largest (and some smaller) parties are making. Indeed, rather than putting forward ways we can broaden the tax base to mitigate the risks our over-reliance on corporation tax revenues brings (as recommended by the Commission on Taxation and Welfare), all three are proposing non-trivial packages of tax cuts totalling between €3 billion (SF/FF) and €7 billion (FG) per year by 2030. This includes the effective gutting – in slightly different ways – of the Universal Social Charge, one of the few measures brought in over recent decades to broaden the tax base.

As Cliff Taylor wrote in the Irish Times, a “real issue for the parties is how they would deal with this [loss of corporation tax revenues] and what parts of their programme would be lost if the resources available were less than expected. None have been clear on this.”

Judging from the tenor of the campaign to date, there is no reason to expect this to change by polling day next week.

Barra Roantree is Assistant Professor & Director of the MSc in Economic Policy at the Department of Economics, Trinity College Dublin.