Several workshops have been held across the country for farm advisers and agents submitting TAMS III applications in order to highlight some of the main issues that the Department is having with faulty or incomplete applications.

While the figure is not yet known for TAMS III, circa 50% of TAMS II applications had queries related to them.

The next tranche of TAMS is set to close on Friday, 12 April. Below is an outline of some of the more common issues the Department is dealing with on TAMS III.

Planning

  • Full-planning permission must be granted at time of submission of application. A decision to grant is not permissible. Where investments are below the threshold in size for planning (>200m²) then the letter of exemption from the local authority must be submitted at time of application.
  • The conditions of planning must be submitted with the application.
  • Drawings (e.g. plan and elevation of proposed farm building) must be submitted with application.
  • Drawings must be stamped by the local authority.

    • Young Farmers/Women Farmers

  • Incorrect Young Farmer/Women Farmer Declaration provided. Applications where a Young Farmer submits under the Women Farmer Capital Investment Scheme will be ineligible, despite them being the same grant rate.
  • Appropriate education certificates must be submitted.

    • Slurry Storage

  • Where a slurry storage Costings Sheet is completed ensure that the ‘Cubic Capacity of the tank’ and ‘Ref. Cost per cubic metre total capacity’ are input on the system in the correct fields. A common error is that the input of dimensions is incorrect.

    • Farm Yard/Field Plan

  • A field plan (for fencing investments) must be included in the application, with the type of fencing and/or gateways indicated on the field plan.
  • The fencing length/number of gateways on the system must correspond with field plan.
  • Gateways must be indicated and be part of proposed new fencing.
  • All Investments must be indicated on Farm Yard Plan.

    • Document uploads

  • Documents must be uploaded under the correct category, e.g. education can not be uploaded as general correspondence.
  • Maps must be A3 size or smaller. Larger maps are not eligible.

    • Farm Yard Plan (FYP)

    Common issues include:

  • No name, address, or herd number on FYP.
  • No TAMS number on FYP.
  • No Eircode or GPS reference on FYP.
  • Locations of external and internal agitation points not identified on FYP.
  • No Legend on FYP.
  • Location of the investment not marked on FYP.

    • Reasons for applications being rejected

  • T&Cs not adhered to
  • <5ha of land owned/leased by applicant
  • < 3 equines on equine census for equine investments.
  • All applicants not meeting eligibility in joint venture.
  • Investments < €2000 within a scheme.
  • Query letters ignored/not replied to.
  • Blank document uploaded.

    • Where queries are sent out to agents/farmers in relation to applications, then there is a 10-day window to submit a response.

    Agents or farmers who fail to reply to query letters risk the application being rejected. /Ramona Farrelly

    Where no correspondence is received by the Department, then a second query letter will be sent. If this is again not replied to within a 10-day window, then the application is at risk of being rejected.

    TAMS II

    TAMS II closed for applications on the 16 December 2022 with 66,073 applications submitted throughout its life-span. €434m has been paid to date spread across 36,777 applications, equating to roughly €11,800 per application.

    A further 56,670 approvals have issued so far of which 19,893 have yet to submit a payment claim (35%); 14,456 of these approvals have expired with a value of €145m, while 5,437 valid approvals are currently outstanding (9.5%) for TAMS II.

    The Department has stated that approvals and payments are ongoing, while post payment inspections can be carried out on farms for five years from the payment date.