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The Targeted Agriculture Modernisation Scheme (TAMS) is drifting into irrelevance due to the completely inadequate and obsolete costings on which the grants were based, according to the ICMSA.
Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) farm and rural affairs committee chair Denis Drennan said that while the approval of all qualified applications received under tranche 23 of TAMS was good news, the problem is the costings being used have drifted 30% to 40% off the real figures farmers are being quoted.
However, the association welcomed the 100% approval rate announced by Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue on Tuesday.
Obsolete costings
Drennan said: “The main problem with TAMS was not with the processing of the application per se, but the completely inadequate and obsolete costings on which the grants were based.
“It’s becoming irrelevant because the costings being used have drifted 30% to 40% off the real figures farmers are being quoted for materials and work.”
The TAMS grants are, to be honest, hopelessly adrift
He claimed that the ICMSA has repeatedly pointed this quote gap out and referred the Department officials to the quotes that farmers are actually getting.
“The TAMS grants are, to be honest, hopelessly adrift.”
Inflation
Drennan said that construction material inflation was “yet another area” impacting farm margins.
He said farmers are seeing what he acknowledged as “decent current prices for milk and beef effectively being burned through”.
Revised costings need to be finalised immediately
“Whether it’s fertiliser, diesel or concrete, everywhere we look we are coming up against rates of inflation that have actually overtaken what should be a decent milk price.”
Drennan described the Department’s recent indication that it will be the second TAMS tranche of 2022 before new costings are in place as “simply unacceptable”.
“Revised costings need to be finalised immediately and applied to all outstanding TAMS applications.”
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