The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has issued an update on payments made to farmers across various farm schemes this week.

Payments of €16.9 million issued to farmers under the Sheep Improvement Scheme this week, with a total of 15,527 farmers paid.

Under the 2025 National Sheep Welfare Scheme, €232,883 was paid out this week, bringing the total payments to €16.67 million to 13,371 farmers.

8,153 participants in the 2025 National Dairy Beef Weighing Scheme have received €4.09 million this week.

TAMS

This week, over €1.7 million was paid out to farmers under the Targeted Agricultural Modernisation Schemes (TAMS) 3.

39,098 approvals have been issued for TAMS 3 so far, with 15,264 payment applications submitted.

In total, €116.79 million has now been paid out across 13,078 TAMS 3 claims.

Under the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES), €180,000 was paid to farmers this week.

€13,764 was paid to participants in the Organic Farming Scheme.

€1,307 was paid under the Baling Assistance Payment.

Oversubscribed

National Dairy Beef Weighing Scheme payments commenced issuing this week, as did Sheep Improvement Scheme payments.

The number of eligible calves that can be paid on in the National Dairy Beef Weighing Scheme has been cut due to the scheme being oversubscribed.

DAFM has told stakeholders that, under the scheme, over 305,000 calves were weighed by the deadline of November 1.

However, the scheme only has a budget of around €4 million.

The department said that, to stay within that budget, the maximum payable animals will have to be reduced from 50 to 31.