The Department of Finance has published its estimates of income and expenditure for next year.
It projects a rise in current spending next year of €5 billion, because of extra social welfare and debt service costs.
However, the estimates take no account of the Government’s cuts of at least €4bn planned for the Budget, or of any additional capital investments in the banks.
These estimates are in effect the opening position for next Wednesday’s budget - in other words what the Government expects to spend before it applies the €4 billion or so in planned cuts.
Social welfare spending is projected to go up by €3 billion, as unemployment rises, and servicing the growing national debt will require an extra €2 billion in interest payments.
Strip out the €11 billion cost of nationalising Anglo Irish bank and recapitalising the other main banks, and capital spending is projected to rise by €125m next year to €7.6 billion.
The estimates make no provision for any further bank capitalisation measures in 2010.
They also do not take account of the €750m cut in capital spending signalled in April's Budget - a figure that is likely to rise in Wednesday’s Budget.
On the income side the department of finance expects the corporation tax take to be down by €500m next year, but anticipates new income of €1 billion in payments from the banks for the guarantee scheme.
The general Government balance - the measure of how much the government will have to borrow - is estimated at 11.75% of GDP this year, rising to 13.5% next year - all before the governments planned cuts equivalent to two percent of GDP, which aim to stabilise the deficit at 11.5% next year.
