WHERE'S MY MONEY? · SECTOR 02 OF 08
Health spending in Ireland
Hospitals, medicines and community care. Compare the 2026 estimate with the published Budget 2027 allocation, and see what this sector covers.
Expenditure estimates — not confirmed final outturn. Source checked 2026-11-13.
01 / FIGURES IN CONTEXT
Health: spending over time
Health expenditure supports the public system's capacity to deliver hospital treatment, primary care, community services, medicines and other services. It includes much more than the cost of visits a household happens to make this year.
Spending estimate by year (billion euro)
| Year | Amount | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | €26.0bn | Provisional 2025 outturn |
| 2026 | €27.4bn | 2026 estimate |
| 2027 | €29.1bn | 2027 Budget estimate |
Changes between estimates may reflect inflation, new allocations and/or transfers of departmental functions. They should not be presented automatically as a like-for-like increase in services.
02 / FOLLOW THE CATEGORY
What does this sector include?
An authoritative deeper split would distinguish hospital services, primary and community care, mental health, care for older people and medicines. Those programme-level financial amounts are not implied by the sector total.
Acute and specialist hospitals
Acute hospitals provide inpatient, outpatient and specialist care; their service costs are not one uniform per-patient amount.
Emergency and ambulance services
Emergency and ambulance services maintain capacity even for people who never call an ambulance or attend an emergency department.
Primary and community care
Primary and community services encompass care delivered outside large acute hospitals.
Mental health and CAMHS
Mental health spending can involve community teams, specialist services and child and adolescent mental health care.
Disability and older-person care
Older-person and disability supports can include community services and residential settings, depending on programme definitions.
Medical cards and medicines
Medical-card schemes and medicine reimbursements require separate utilisation and eligibility data to evaluate accurately.
Public health and prevention
Public health work includes population-wide prevention and monitoring, whose benefits are shared rather than individually invoiced.
Why this distinction matters
National health expenditure cannot be divided by population and described as the actual medical benefit received by each person. Shared capacity, access rules and individual needs all matter.
Amounts for individual programmes would need to reconcile to the department and sector totals before appearing in these charts. We do not divide the sector figure evenly among the topics above.
03 / IDENTIFIED PROGRAMME ALLOCATIONS
Explore 5 published funding amounts in health.
These are official 2026 estimates, allocations and selected measures. Some are parts of others, or cover a different reporting boundary. Do not add the bars together or subtract them from the sector total.
Bar lengths indicate the relative size of the amounts in this selected set only. They do not represent a complete or mutually exclusive spending breakdown. Each linked programme page identifies the source, status and any overlap.
Browse all 49 verified allocations →DEPARTMENTAL ACCOUNTING · 2026
What were the 2026 net supply grants?
For this sector, the following Dáil Vote authorisations are listed separately from the gross €27.4bn sector estimate. Net grants are not extra money to add to the figure above, and a Vote may span several public services.
Exact net voted supply grants from 25 March 2026 are a different accounting basis from gross spending and are not a reconciled sector subhead split.
03 / YOUR PERSONAL CONTEXT
A proportional tax receipt, not a traced payment.
If you paid a particular amount in PAYE, USC and employee PRSI, what would health represent if that money were distributed using the national 2026 spending mix?
This multiplies the figure you enter by 20.6%. Public finances pool revenues; this is not a payment receipt or the monetary value of services you personally receive.
Calculate my full Irish tax receipt →04 / COMMON QUESTIONS
Understanding health spending.
Is €27.4bn what the HSE spent in 2026?
It is the published 2026 sector estimate in this snapshot, not a confirmed year-end HSE outturn. The sector and the HSE are not necessarily identical accounting boundaries.
Do people with private health insurance receive no health benefit?
No. Emergency capacity, public health functions and many services remain relevant; private insurance does not remove the public system from an individual's life.
Why can health spending rise without waiting lists falling?
Costs, population needs, staffing, capacity and service performance can change separately. An expenditure increase is not itself an outcome measure.
Related Compound resources
05 / CONTINUE EXPLORING
Explore the rest of the public budget.
Every sector links back to the complete directory and to related categories, so you can follow the spending picture without leaving Compound.
Sources and limitations
All figures on this page come from the published government 2026 Health sector estimate and Budget 2027 expenditure summary. Official methodology describes voted and non-voted totals, provisional outturns and historical classification changes.
Figures are rounded to €0.1bn. Departmental accounting categories are not always the same as everyday descriptions of a service. No supplier or programme allocation is inferred from this headline figure.