The new Targeted Agricultural Modernisation Scheme (TAMS) III is providing farmers with “virtually free machines” to put the contracting sector out of business, an agri contractors’ representative group is claiming.

Contractors are not eligible for payments under the Department of Agriculture scheme, despite the Association of Farm Contractors in Ireland (FCI) having repeatedly sought their inclusion.

The FCI slammed TAMS III as being unfair to contractors and has labelled the decision to exclude contractors from grant aid an “outright declaration of war”.

It warned that the scheme could put contractors out of business, as grant-aided machinery will out-compete non-subsidised contracted machines for work.

Difficult to compete

“Increasingly, professional agricultural contractors are finding it difficult to compete with farmer contractors who have availed of and will be encouraged to continue to secure substantial grant aid for the purchase of a range of machinery under the TAMS III schemes,” commented FCI chair John Hughes.

“The process of blindsiding the agricultural contractor sector by the Department, coupled with current huge cost inflation, goes unrecognised as a crisis of a true national proportion.

“The economic impacts of the new TAMS III scheme will include the loss of rural employment in agricultural contracting, where up to 20,000 full- and part-time [people] are employed in skilled occupations.”

Safety concerns

The FCI took aim at the new scheme for failing to provide additional funding for extra silage slab space, which it claims pushes contractors on to higher and potentially unsafe pits.

“Again, this new TAMS III grant scheme does not prioritise the construction of additional silage storage capacity over machinery investment, which is a second blatant omission of what should have been another absolute priority,” said Hughes.

The FCI called on the Department to establish an independently audited agri contractors’ register, which would pave the way for contractors to draw down investment aid.