Aindrias Moynihan (Cork North-West, Fianna Fail)
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377. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the measures being taken to address the high demand under TAMS 3 under the solar capital investment scheme; his plans to allocate additional funding to meet the demand; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [50407/26]

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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The Targeted Agriculture Modernisation Scheme (TAMS 3) provides grants to farmers to build and/or improve a specified range of farm buildings and equipment on their holdings. The Solar Capital Investment scheme (SCIS) is one of these measures which provides support to farmers wishing to invest in renewable energy.

SCIS has proved to be extremely popular, with payments of over €35 million issued to farmers since payments commenced in June 2024. To date, 6,868 applications have been received, with 3,590 approvals issued, allowing those farmers to proceed with their investments. Approvals are continuing to issue on eligible applications once then necessary checks have been completed.

The number of applications and the level of funding provided to date under certain schemes, such as the SCIS have far exceeded expectations, to the extent that more than 20% of the TAMS budget is being spent on SCIS.

In order to ensure that the available budget is distributed fairly over the remainder of the CSP programming period, it was necessary to limit the number of approved applications in recent tranches by applying ranking and selection criteria.

On that basis, I took the decision to focus on approvals for core on-farm investments such as farm safety and nutrient storage. In this regard, 100% of eligible applications under Farm Safety and 75% of eligible nutrient storage applications will receive approval in Tranche 11, which closed for applications in March this year.

The TAMS scheme will be kept under ongoing review for the remainder of the CSP based on the number of applications received and the available budget.