The fact that revised costings under the Targeted Agricultural Moderisation Scheme (TAMS) won’t be available to farmers in the next tranche in January has been described as “unacceptable”.
The Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) is calling for the costings to be implemented “without delay”.
The next tranche of TAMS will be tranche 25.
Michael Biggins, the association’s rural development chairperson, said this morning (Friday, December 3) that, at a recent Farmers’ Charter of Rights meeting, Department of Agriculture officials confirmed that the TAMS reference costs for grant-aided work will be finalised by early next week.
However, it appears unlikely that these costings will be available when the new tranche opens on January 15 (the tranche is set to close to applications on April 8).
“If the revised costings are not implemented, farmers will be forced to work with reference costs which were compiled nearly a year ago, in March 2020,” Biggins highlighted.
He added: “They are completely out of date due to extremely high levels of price inflation of steel, timber and other buildings materials. Failure to adopt the updated reference costs will place these farmers at a significant financial disadvantage.
“In 2021, and especially in the last six months, we have witnessed an unprecedented rise in inflation, meaning price of building materials such as steal and timber has soared.
“The current costings, which were updated in March, are completely out of line with the price of materials today, making it impossible for farmers to begin their projects,” Biggins noted.
According to the IFA rural development chair, the delay in updating the reference costs means the farmers will also not receive an accurate rate of grant that is reflective of the actual cost of investment incurred.
“It is critically important that the revised costings are made available when tranche 25 opens on January 15. I’m calling on Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue to ensure that the revised reference costs, which are due to be completed by the department next week, are implemented before that tranche opens for applications,” Biggins concluded.