From Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth
Published on 28 September 2023
Last updated on 28 September 2023
This paper is a pilot examination of the spending of the Irish Government on children, by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs in 2019 (in 2020, that Department became the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth). Given how important spending on children is, it is important to know how much the state spends on children. However, this amount is unknown. It is of course known when spending is explicitly for children, but the amount of total Irish state expenditure that benefits children, with one exception discussed below, has not been calculated. In this paper we introduce a pilot study that estimates total expenditure on children. This report is a first step in, what we see as, a long-term process of understanding whether expenditure is sufficient to adequately meet the needs of children, now and into the future.
