Fresh speculation that the decision process on applications to the Targeted Agriculture Modernisation Schemes (TAMS 3) could be delayed is “unbelievable”, according to the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA).
The organisation has today (Thursday, August 3) warned that speculation which suggests that the decision-making process on TAMS could be pushed out until November “had better not be true”.
The ICMSA has said that if this were to happen it would end up “writing off” the whole year for farmers.
According to the deputy president of the ICMSA, Denis Drennan, everyone currently agrees that improved water quality in Ireland “is a priority in terms of the sustainability ambitions for the agriculture sector”.
He said, in light of this, it would make no sense for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) to “operate a timeline that was effectively unworkable and wasted a whole year that farmers had been told could not be wasted”.
“ICMSA and farmers in general are just at a loss to work out the sequencing that the department is operating here.
“We all agree that TAMS is the area where we can get environmental results quickest, and it is the most obvious ‘controllable’ – it’s entirely within our powers to get the processing done in a workable timeframe that works within the farming calendar.
“But that’s just not the way this has been queued up by the department. We are now hearing rumours that decisions on approval should not be expected untill November at the earliest,” Drennan added.
He said if this materialised then many farmers would say at that stage “what is the point?”
“Who’s going to find a contractor and start the work at that stage in that weather?
“Would it not have made so much more sense to bring forward the whole sequence so that the approval and construction was possible by early June when the weather and ground conditions would allow for faster and more efficient construction?
“The department’s sequencing and timeline on this – something that was entirely within their own control – has ended up wasting the whole year. Genuinely, what is the point in giving a farmer the go-ahead in November to begin construction work?” Drennan added.
According to the ICMSA deputy president farmer frustration is at an “acute” level at this time.
“We can’t understand why it’s deemed impossible for the department to introduce obvious and logical sequences for these schemes?
“We keep being told that there’s no time to lose in terms of safeguarding water quality and then we have a completely unworkable and illogical sequence like this that just wastes a whole year that we were told repeatedly we didn’t have,” Drennan added.