Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent)
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684. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will address concerns around the rules excluding robotic farmers as proposed for the new TAMS scheme; if the new rules exclude farmers who received support for one robot under the previous TAMS from accessing supports for an essential additional unit; the rationale for this; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10827/23]

Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent)
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689. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will outline the rationale for excluding farmers who received support for one robot under the previous TAMS from accessing supports for an essential additional unit under the proposed new TAMS scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [10958/23]

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 684 and 689 together.

I was pleased to recently announce the new and expanded range of investments under TAMS 3. This makes it our largest ever on-farm capital investment scheme. I have introduced some changes under the TAMS 3 scheme to continue with our overall agriculture and environmental priorities.

On the dairy sector, the list of potential investments is larger than ever before. In addition to the investments being carried over from TAMS II there is a wide range of additional investments being introduced for farmers, including farm roadways, bovine fencing, health and fertility monitoring systems, automatic drafting systems, public road underpasses and milk recording systems.

When a farmer is planning to update their dairy system, investment in the milking machine is only a portion of the required investment. It is important that dairy farmers also invest in animal housing, slurry storage, fodder storage and making their holding more accessible. To this end, TAMS is designed to encourage farmers to invest in these animal welfare and environmentally beneficial investments before investing in additional milking equipment. It is for this reason that there are limits on robotic milkers where farmers have previously benefited from this under the TAMS scheme.