Tranche two approvals for TAMS breaches 7,000

Approvals under tranche two of TAMS have been progressing well, with 7,153 applications approved as of this week, out of a total of 9,110 applications submitted.

Of these submitted applications, 528 have been rejected for various reasons (investment below €2,000, land area below 3ha etc) while a further 206 applications have been withdrawn by the applicant, leaving a total viable number of applications coming to 8,376 so far.

A total of 1,144 applications have been approved in the month (circa 286/week), and with only 1,223 valid applications currently being processed, this would indicate that the majority of applications will be approved in the next four weeks.

Approval rates run between 53.9% and 88.9% across the ten schemes. The Solar Capital Investment Scheme (SCIS) retains its position as having the lowest approval rate, with only 398 applications approved to date (53.9%), up from 233 applications approved last month. The Pig and Poultry Capital Investment Scheme (PPCIS) has unsurpringly ranked with having the highest approval rate at 89.1%, with the low number of applications (49) being the primary factor there.

Tranche one

There remain 195 applications still ‘’in progress’’ regarding tranche one of the scheme.

To date, 7,178 applications have been approved, with 176 applications withdrawn and 654 applications rejected out of a total of 8,203 applications submitted.

This brings the current acceptance rate to 87.5%. The bulk of these applications awaiting approval are in relation to the Animal Welfare and Nutrient Storage Scheme (74), the Solar Capital Investment Scheme (37) and the Farm Safety Capital Investment Scheme (35).

Costs to be reviewed

At a joint Oireachtas committee meeting two weeks ago, in the issue regarding ACRES and TAMS, Senator Paul Daly highlighted the difference between the Department’s reference costs and the actual costs with ‘’upward pressure on prices, in particular on metals and concrete’’.

‘’There is a serious gap between your reference costs for a TAMS project and what the project will actually eventually cost the farmer.’’

Senator Daly then asked the Department officials present as to the stage the Department was at in regard to looking at reference costs.

“We will review reference costs, we do it on an ongoing basis. The last time we reviewed them was late 2022/early 2023 before we introduced TAMS III. I think in a general sense, from the evidence we’ve seen, we’re still not too far off the reference costs.

“We will carry out a review, we will have to look at the costs and receipts from the current scheme in terms of people who have submitted their approvals.

“We will consider it in the broader background of material costs and labour costs’’ stated Paul Savage, assistant secretary for Rural Development.

‘’We will probably carry out an extensive review in 2025 when we have the evidence fully there, based on the payments that we have going through at the moment, and that should allow us to address any particular issue that’s there in relation to refence costs being out of kilter.

In large parts of TAMS, we’re still pretty much on the money with reference costs, with some exceptions.’’

John Muldowney of the Department of Agriculture elaborated that the receipts received only formed part of the influence on reference costs, with ‘’Quantity Surveyors Ireland, CSO data and doing spot surveys on engineering companies, builder provider companies that are doing these sheds with building samples that we have to get a sense of the direction of travel, so we are matching up the trends that are there with the big databases to match with the trends we are seeing with receipts.’’