Some 816 payment claims have been lodged to date under the TAMS II Scheme with the Department of Agriculture and of this number 497 of these claims have been approved for payment, it has been confirmed.

A total of 6,093 approvals have now issued under the scheme.

The Department is continuing to process applications for approval and claims for payment on an ongoing basis.

Last year, €3.9m issued to farmers under the TAMS II Scheme, the Minister for Agriculture, Michael Creed, confirmed in response to a parliamentary question to Fianna Fail’s Dara Calleary this week.

This money went to 347 farmers, with farmers in Cork, Kilkenny and Tipperary in receipt of €1.9m of this money.

The figures also show that some 431 farmers have submitted claims and have yet to be paid.

The Minister said that all claims that are submitted for investment works undertaken under the TAMS II Schemes are examined.

“Any issues outstanding are raised by Department Officials directly with the applicant concerned with a view to having all payment claims processed as speedily as possible.

“My Department continues to process payments on an ongoing basis and as this is an ongoing process, there are a number of claims with outstanding issues awaiting clarification from the applicants before payment can issue.”

The Minister didn’t confirm to Deputy Calleary whether he would review the issue of there being no facility to make amendments to a TAMS plan post submission.

“When an application is submitted to the TAMS II online system it is taken as the full and final application for the scheme.”

To ensure a workable system of approval and payment it is not possible for applicants to make amendments after submitting the application.

“In the case of an obvious administrative error that is discovered before approval, it is possible for the locally based administrative staff to advise the applicants and to allow for changes agreed with the applicant to be made to the online system.

“Such changes are limited to obvious errors in limited circumstances.”