Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 25 February 2021
147. Deputy Cian O'Callaghan asked the Minister for Defence the annual spend on national defence and on the Defence Forces excluding pensions as a percentage of GDP since 1999, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10726/21]
View answerThe table below sets out Vote 36 (Defence) Gross expenditure, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at current market prices as published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), along with Defence expenditure expressed as a percentage of GDP for the period 1999 to 2019. Details of GDP figures for 2020 are not yet available.
Defence Expenditure (Vote 36) 1999-2019 as a % of GDP
|
Year |
Defence (Vote 36) Expenditure €m |
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) €m |
Defence (Vote 36) Expenditure as % of GDP |
|
1999 |
760 |
92,669 |
0.82% |
|
2000 |
820 |
108,400 |
0.76% |
|
2001 |
731 |
122,010 |
0.60% |
|
2002 |
725 |
135,956 |
0.53% |
|
2003 |
711 |
145,534 |
0.49% |
|
2004 |
733 |
156,189 |
0.47% |
|
2005 |
759 |
170,231 |
0.45% |
|
2006 |
772 |
184,914 |
0.42% |
|
2007 |
817 |
197,130 |
0.41% |
|
2008 |
880 |
187,620 |
0.47% |
|
2009 |
804 |
169,786 |
0.47% |
|
2010 |
744 |
167,674 |
0.44% |
|
2011 |
704 |
170,951 |
0.41% |
|
2012 |
657 |
175,104 |
0.38% |
|
2013 |
667 |
179,616 |
0.37% |
|
2014 |
673 |
195,148 |
0.34% |
|
2015 |
671 |
262,853 |
0.26% |
|
2016 |
671 |
270,809 |
0.25% |
|
2017 |
681 |
300,387 |
0.23% |
|
2018 |
701 |
326,986 |
0.21% |
|
2019 |
756 |
356,051 |
0.21% |
|
2020 |
781 |
Note: The CSO advised that Ireland’s GDP grew considerably from 2015, mainly due to multinational companies moving their intellectual properties to Ireland, resulting in a huge spike in Irish earnings and the impact of ‘tax inversions’, where businesses moved their official headquarters to Ireland but kept the bulk of their actual operations abroad.
The Government are committed to ensuring that the Defence Forces have sufficient funding to deliver effectively on all their assigned roles, both at home and overseas, as set out in the White Paper on Defence and reinforced by White Paper Update 2019.
