Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon said that his department has seen an exponential increase in the number of applications for capital grants under TAMS III, with 8,000 applications in the latest tranche, compared to around 3,000 per tranche under TAMS II.

Heydon told the Irish Farmers Journal that he has to manage the TAMS budget out to the end of 2027 and he has to prioritise areas. He said he needs to support farm obligations for slurry storage under the nitrates derogation and to protect investments in the area of farm safety. This means, he said, that there “has to be ranking and selection” in where TAMS money is going.

These budget constraints mean that, from tranche 10 onwards, a 90% reduction was applied to TAMS solar PV expenditure limits and ranking and selection criteria was introduced. This effectively removes solar installations which include the farmhouse from the scheme and therefore excludes low-electricity demand sectors such as livestock and tillage. “I have made it clear to colleagues in cabinet that if there is extra capital funding available, we can actually spend that money in agriculture,” Heydon said.

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Potentially there is a source for that extra capital funding already in place. Recent reports show that around 20% of overall carbon tax revenues are not used for environmental measures. A substantial amount of the money raised from the carbon tax already goes to agriculture, with €173m allocated to Heydon’s department for 2026, almost exclusively to fund ACRES payments.

Heydon said “if we want to spend that [carbon tax] money in the area of renewables, we can spend that very quickly in agriculture”. He noted that the massive increase in demand for TAMS is an indication of how successful TAMS is, adding that he wants it to be an integral part of the next CAP.