To date, 13,514 farmers have applied to the Targeted Agricultural Modernisation II Scheme (TAMS II), the latest figures from the Department of Agriculture show.
Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed revealed the figures this week in a response to Fianna Fáil’s Charlie McConalogue.
Of the 13,514 applications, 11,590 have received approval by the Department, of which just 21% (or 2,522 approved applicants) have submitted a payment claim.
For applicants who have submitted a claim for payment, 72% (1,820) of farmers have been paid.
Breakdown by farm size
Furthermore, the Minister provided a breakdown of the current rate of applications, approvals, payment claims and the number that have been paid to date by farm size.
As can be seen from the table below, farmers in the 50-100ha farm size have the highest number of applications to date and account for 41% of farmers who have received payment.
Spending review
The Minister also commented on the spending review on TAMS II.
“The spending review carried out by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform highlighted the fact that the TAMS II Scheme has been very successful in the rate of approvals that have been issued to farmers since the scheme was launched in mid-2015.
“In order for the success of the scheme to translate into concrete improvements to the infrastructure of individual farms across the country, it is now up to the applicants to act on these approvals.
“My Department continues to facilitate the ongoing issuing of approvals and urges all farmers who have completed their works to submit their payment claims to the online system.”
Millions in unspent TAMS money may be lost