Under 22% of approved TAMS II applicants have submitted payment claims

Under 22% of approved TAMS II (Targeted Agricultural Modernisation Schemes II) applicants have submitted payment claims.

The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Michael Creed, confirmed that just 2,522 payment claims have been lodged with the department in response to a parliamentary question from Fianna Fail’s agriculture spokesperson Charlie McConalogue.

In total, some 13,514 applications were submitted under TAMS II. With an approval rate of slightly over 85%, a total of 11,590 applicants were given the go ahead by the department.

With only 2,522 payment claims lodged, the department has managed to process 1,820 of these claims – or 72% of the total number of claims lodged, the latest figures show.

A spending review carried out by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform on the TAMS II scheme highlighted that the scheme has been very successful in the rate of approvals that have been issued to farmers since it was launched in mid-2015, Minister Creed said.

In order for the success of the scheme to translate into concrete improvements to the infrastructure of individual farms across the country it is now up to the applicants to act on these approvals.

“My department continues to facilitate the on-going issuing of approvals and urges all farmers who have completed their works to submit their payment claims to the online system,” he concluded.

TAMS II proceeds TAMS I, the Farm Waste Management Scheme and the Farm Improvement Scheme.