The Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris has said that new spending ceilings on Government departments will be "binding".
He said a medium-term fiscal plan for the country, which the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC) had warned was late in being submitted, had been approved by the European Commission.
Speaking to RTÉ's This Week, Mr Harris said the Government had been "juggling" different demands, and while the Irish economy was in "good health", the country needed to return to "a rhythm of regular spending structures".
IFAC had said in November that a medium-term fiscal plan had not been submitted to the European Commission and warned the Government was "budgeting like there's no tomorrow".
It has also criticised the previous Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil-Green Party government for repeatedly breaching a spending increase cap of 5%.
Mr Harris said there was a lot of extra spending in capital and infrastructure, but new spending ceilings on government departments would now be "binding".
"That's not how we're budgeting anymore because we now have this medium-term fiscal framework that basically means spending ceilings are now binding, and as Minister for Finance, I won't be lifting those spending ceilings any further," he said.
"So, we have allowed for a significant level of spending growth, and we've tried to balance that. But as a result of that, Government departments do have to live within those envelopes.
"Yes, they have to, because if they don't, it has a knock-on effect into the following year's spending because the spending ceilings are now binding under the new plan."
He added: "A lot of the extra spending that we're profiling is in the space of capital, of infrastructure, of things that are absolutely vital and, in many ways in the Department of Finance, we actually see that as a saving into the future because we're acquiring public assets.
"We're also running budget surpluses and setting money aside into two long-term saving funds."
