Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We are required to do certain things before we spend money that is co-financed from Europe. If farmers start work before getting approval, we cannot give them any money. There is an initial approval process and then there is an inspection and a whole series of form-filling, and quotations are needed from multiple contractors to ensure that farmers are getting value for money and so on. It is a bit tedious, but many farmers have worked the TAMS system well and it has worked well for them. We will look at it again next year to see if we can improve the pace of turnaround, but sometimes people get approval and they sit on the approval without doing anything for quite some time. Then, when they decide they do want to move forward, they contact the Department and want an inspection straight away so that they can get on with the work. We will review it and see how we can do things more efficiently for farmers before we open up new TAM schemes in January and February, but for many farmers the system has worked reasonably well.