IT HARDLY NEEDS restating that the economy is going gangbusters. We might be hitting a ceiling of what the multinational sector can do for Irish jobs, but the headline figures are almost preposterously good: never in the history of the State have so many people been at work. Nor has the unemployment rate been so persistently low: not since December 2021, in the days of the omicron wave of Covid-19, has it been above 5.0%.

Opinions differ as to what exactly amounts to ‘zero unemployment’. There will always be adults who are incapable of participating in the labour force, and the official figures do not discern between those who could work and those who cannot. Helpfully, however, the CSO does publish a version of the rate that excludes those aged 15 to 24. With those excluded, the rate has been below 4% for four-and-a-half unbroken years. Long may it last.

But in this Dáil recess week it may be worth reflecting on how, at a time of unprecedented bounty, we’ve still never spent more on Social Protection.

Much more than ‘the Department of the Dole’

The department now run by Dara Calleary has traditionally been the biggest spender in the country, irrespective of how the economy is doing and how many people might be out of work. This year its budget runs to just under €31 billion, its highest ever. Of every seven euro put into everyday spending in 2027, Social Protection takes two.

We don’t have a line-by-line breakdown of how the Department intends to spend every single bit of its 2027 Budget – that doesn’t come until the ‘revised estimates’ are published, usually in the days before Christmas – but the allocations for 2026 are a good indicator. The combined spend on Jobseekers’ Allowance and Benefit, the two main categories of payment to those........

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