The Court of Accounts published its report on the State budget in 2023. The State budget deficit will be €173.0bn in 2023, the highest level ever recorded after 2020 (€178.1bn), a year marked by the Covid crisis. Expenditure remained at a very high level, as the initial Finance Act did not provide for any structural savings to begin reducing the deficit. While certain exceptional emergency health and stimulus measures were scaled back in 2023, new expenditure has taken over, whether in the form of measures to support inflation and high energy prices, or 'ordinary' State expenditure, which is rising steadily. Tax receipts also fell in 2023, after two very buoyant years. The Government's forecasts for some taxes were too optimistic. More fundamentally, changes in State tax revenues are less and less correlated with economic growth, with the State now only receiving a minority share of VAT.
