Garda expenditure will fall by more than any other area across the €2.24 billion total justice spend next year with 7 per cent of Garda savings coming from pay-related items.
Total Garda spending will reach €1.368 billion, down 9 per cent.
The witness-protection programme is one of the few areas to receive increased funding, with spending on it set to more than double next year to €1.2 million, up from €498,000.
Expenditure in almost every other area of the force, including the maintenance of Garda stations, the Garda plane and money for witnesses expenses, to name but a few, all reduced.
The cuts will likely exacerbate the strained relations between the Government and the Garda Representative Association.
Despite the cuts, Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said fighting crime would remain a top priority. He allocated €4 million for the long-promised DNA database and €4.5 million for the new State Pathologist Laboratory.
However, he has now said the number of Garda members by the end of this year will reach “approximately 14,500”. This is some way off the 14,800 promised only months ago, before the extent of early retirements became known.
Expenditure across the prison service will reach €334 million next year, down eight per cent on 2009. Some €16.4 million of the €29.5 million reduction is achieved through pay cuts and reductions in professional fees.
Expenditure on courts will actually increase in 2010, due to expenditure on the new Criminal Courts Complex in Dublin, which will cost a once-off capital payment of €21m and annual repayments of a further€21 million.
A planned cut of 15 per cent in criminal legal aid is being sought through the introduction of a pilot test procurement exercise to establish whether criminal legal aid could be provided “in a more cost-effective.... predictable manner”.
Mr Ahern also announced changes were being drafted to the existing Act providing for criminal legal aid, including the introduction of compulsory means testing in cases where the prosecution object to legal aid and a power to require people with means to pay towards funding their defence.
The civil legal aid budget is to be cut by 5 per cent.
The Courts Service sees cuts to travel and subsistence, incidental expenses, consultancy services and courthouse capital works.
Last year’s cuts to bodies falling under the umbrella of the Department of Justice are not repeated this year, with both the Equality Authority and the Human Rights Commission retaining their 2009 budgets.
They were cut by 43 and 23 per cent respectively last year. The Equality Tribunal, whose allocation was slightly increased last year, faces a cut of eight per cent.
The National Disability Authority sees its budget increase by 23 per cent next year and that of the Status of People with Disabilities by 26 per cent.