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Percentage of government revenue (mainly taxation) to direct defence spend (OpEx and CapEx) is another matrix of comparison of defence spend between countries gaining favour as an alternative to a GDP based formula. One that has been more commonly used in the past when comparing Health, Education and Welfare spending.
There is also the percentage of government expenditure which SIPRI does. Which can give an interesting comparative breakdown between similar sized countries with similar standards of living. to find benchmarks.
2019 Defence Expenditure by Percentage of Government Spending of the Five OECD “5 Million Club” Nations
Denmark 2.6%
Finland 2.8%
Ireland 1.1%
New Zealand 3.9%
Norway 3.5%
The debate over GDP, GNI, GNI* is almost as old as the hills, so to give a different perspective one could look at defence expenditure as a % of total government spending. For those that are interested here is the source for the data:
Looking at 2019 just over 1.15% of our government spending was on defence,
Lithuania 5.87%
Greece 5.4% (and they are bankrupt)
Finland 2.79%
Portugal 4.41%
France 3.34%
New Zealand 3.92%
No matter which way you look at it we are nearly always at the bottom. It is a similar picture if one compared spend per capita, we spend $233 pp while Luxembourg spends $707!
I do find it strange that if there was a (hypothetical) pension increase of 100% to DF retirees, this would count as an increase in defence spending...
'He died who loved to live,' they'll say,
'Unselfishly so we might have today!'
Like hell! He fought because he had to fight;
He died that's all. It was his unlucky night. http://www.salamanderoasis.org/poems...nnis/luck.html
I do find it strange that if there was a (hypothetical) pension increase of 100% to DF retirees, this would count as an increase in defence spending...
What is the actual percentage of the defence budget currently allocated to pensions of former members?
A start would be making the DOD stop sending chunks of the budget back almost every year unspent.....the DF are not a temporary piggybank for other departments.
120+ million in 8 years....what could the DF have bought/improved/built with 120 million quid....
Estimates 2021:
Army Pensions - € 257,650,000
Defence - € 785,461,000 (of which DoD € 30,500,000)
So very roughly 25%
Thus to get close to the Defence spend of the other four western liberal democracies in the OECD 5 million club in terms of direct OpEx and CapEx, Ireland would have to effectively triple its current Defence spend per government expenditure from what would be 0.825% to 2.475%, or just below Denmark on 2.6%. In other words its combined CapEx and OpEx annual budget would be or “should” be €2.265 Billion p.a if it was to broadly benchmark with Denmark, Finland, New Zealand and Norway in terms of defence spending.
Do all other public-sector (e.g, Gardai, HSE) & Civil Service pensions come out of their allocated budget?
'He died who loved to live,' they'll say,
'Unselfishly so we might have today!'
Like hell! He fought because he had to fight;
He died that's all. It was his unlucky night. http://www.salamanderoasis.org/poems...nnis/luck.html
Defence spending versus foreign aid would make an interesting graph.
Defence spending versus any other spending by the state would make an interesting graph...
'He died who loved to live,' they'll say,
'Unselfishly so we might have today!'
Like hell! He fought because he had to fight;
He died that's all. It was his unlucky night. http://www.salamanderoasis.org/poems...nnis/luck.html
Do all other public-sector (e.g, Gardai, HSE) & Civil Service pensions come out of their allocated budget?
Most have supplementary estimates at year end to cover them for an expected overspend. Usually in the area of pay and overtime, but sometimes for urgent equipment replacement. i.e during Ireland holding the EU presidency, AGS purchased new motorcycles for traffic control and VIP escort.
For now, everything hangs on implementation of the CoDF report.
Do all other public-sector (e.g, Gardai, HSE) & Civil Service pensions come out of their allocated budget?
“Army Pensions” doesn’t come out of the “Defence” Vote it is separate. However, everyone talks about the Defence budget being over €1 billion. That is actual the “Defence Group”.
Actually most Votes don't have supplementary budgets. In 2019 only 7 out of 42 votes had a supplementary budgets (Health and Education being the largest). All votes returned surpluses.
“Army Pensions” doesn’t come out of the “Defence” Vote it is separate. However, everyone talks about the Defence budget being over €1 billion. That is actual the “Defence Group”.
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