Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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410. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the spend on the TAMS scheme in 2016 and 2017; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11062/18]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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The TAMS II Scheme has been very successful to date in terms of the number of applications that have been approved which now stands at over 13,000. Payments cannot issue until the approved works have been completed and a payment claim is submitted to the online system.

Expenditure on TAMS II in 2016 was €3.9m and in 2017 was €31.3m. 2018 has seen a significant acceleration on the spend with €9.3m paid out this year to date. To date the total spent on TAMS II Schemes is €44.5m.

Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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411. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the budgeted spend for the TAMS scheme in 2016 and 2017; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11063/18]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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The TAMS II Scheme has been very successful to date in terms of the number of applications that have been approved which now stands at over 13,000. Payments cannot issue until the approved works have been completed and a payment claim is submitted to the online system.

Expenditure on TAMS II in 2016 was €3.9m and in 2017 was €31.3m. 2018 has seen a significant acceleration on the spend with €9.3m paid out this year to date. To date the total spent on TAMS II Schemes is €44.5m.

Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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412. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the cost of implementing the TAMS scheme to include the staff and expert fees that developed the scheme in addition to the cost of the information technology infrastructure; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11064/18]

Michael Creed (Cork North West, Fine Gael)
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TAMS II is one of a number of schemes rolled out across the Department under the

Rural Development Programme. As with other RDP schemes, a range of Department staff have inputted and continue to input to both the design and implementation of the scheme from areas such as policy development, IT and the inspectorate.

Given the number of these schemes commencing and in operation at any one time and also the residual infrastructure from previous RDP schemes which is used for schemes under the current Programme,  it is not possible to accurately disaggregate the figures requested from the overall expenditure to outline the costs for any single scheme.

To date, the TAMS scheme is operating extremely efficiently and over 13,000 approvals have issued to farmers across the country to invest in the infrastructure of their farms. Payments are now averaging over €1m per week to farmers.