Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

649. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will increase TAMS funding to deal with the upsurge in applications; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [18744/20]

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The indicative allocation for the TAMS II scheme over the course of the Rural Development Programme is €395 million. To date, €229 million has been paid across all the available schemes and a further €72m in approvals have yet to be claimed by applicants.  Expenditure is being monitored closely on a weekly basis.  

The scheme budget is part of our overall €4billion Rural Development Programme. This Programme is fully subscribed and Ireland is second amongst all EU member states in our drawdown of EU funding. Any additional TAMS funding from within the RDP would require a reallocation from an existing scheme which itself is fully subscribed.

Priority for the TAMS budget must be to get applicants with existing approvals who do not intend to proceed with the investment to let us know so that we can use the that financial commitment for other applicants.  My Department has raised this with farm organisations and with the advisory bodies who have a key role to play in communicating this message to farmers.

Tranche 17 of TAMS II closed on 5 June 2020. Under this tranche 4,952 new applications were received. These applications, together with those rolled over from tranche 16, bring the total number to be considered to 5,430.

The process is that these applications must pass the initial administrative checks required and are then subject to the ranking and selection process. Ranking and selection is the process of ranking each application in each tranche using the pre-defined criteria. The processing of all these applications is underway and approvals will commence in the coming weeks.