Advisers agitated as Department admits major TAMS error

Advisers were extremely aggrieved to learn last Thursday that they had just 24 hours to work on over 1,300 Targeted Agricultural Modernisation Scheme (TAMS) applications which weren’t being automatically rolled over into the next tranche of the scheme.

The Department of Agriculture informed advisers at the Agricultural Consultants Association (ACA) AGM that 1,340 TAMS III applications which had not been successful in tranche nine and 10 had been reset to ‘draft’ that day, and were ready for resubmission.

This news was met with serious concern from advisers in the room as the closing date for applications for the current trance (11) of the scheme was the following day, Friday 6 March.

Issues

Wexford adviser Laura Johnston called for the Department’s TAMS division to be more upfront and honest with advisers and to inform them sooner of issues such as this.

“We’ve now been made aware that we have to go back and work on draft applications before the closing date tomorrow.

“It might be an idea for TAMS to actually notify us via the FAS advisory system – which all the other Department units are able to do to notify us of issues,” she told Robert Leonard from the Department of Agriculture.

Leonard told advisers that letters informing farmers that their applications could be resubmitted were being issued to farmers just that day, admitting that “it’s late”.

“It’s not good enough, I can only hold my hands up,” Leonard said.

Meanwhile, Cavan-based adviser Tom Canning told the Irish Farmers Journal that he had 42 applications which had been reset “on the eleventh hour” and had to squeeze this unexpected workload in on Friday before the deadline.

“Our members went ballistic on Friday when they heard the news.

“It was just a lot of work that we hadn’t expected needed to be done before the weekend.

“What if we were on holidays?” he said.

Leonard explained that over 8,000 TAMS applications which had been approved by the Department since the inception of the scheme have expired.

This money has not been drawn down by the farmer.

The funding allocated for these farmers, Leonard confirmed, has been reassigned into the overall pot of TAMS money.

The Minister also came in for criticism last week from the Micro Renewable Energy Federation (MREF) which accused him of doing a “hatchet job” on solar PV TAMS grants. It comes after the Department introduced ranking and selection for approvals under the scheme.