As some farmers continue to wait for approval from the initial tranches of the Targeted Agriculture Modernisation Schemes (TAMS 3), the farm business committee chair of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers’ Association (ICMSA), Pat O’Brien described the situation as “hugely frustrating”.
Following the first meeting of the Farmers Charter Monitoring Committee 2023-2027, O’Brien has called for the first cases still awaiting a decision to be “prioritised as a matter of urgency”.
O’Brien also said that there were other cases where the TAMS payments were ready, however IT issues within the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) were holding up the disbursement.
O’Brien added that it was an “unfair” situation, where 18 months into TAMS, farmers have still not been paid.
“It’s hugely frustrating and frankly does not reflect very well at all on internal Departmental processes and systems. But there’s another aspect to this: There are deadlines under the new Farmers Charter and the Department has committed to meeting them,” O’Brien said.
ICMSA
“While there has been satisfactory progress on approvals, there is still differences in the costing of the main materials for construction,” O’Brien added.
The ICMSA has asked DAFM official to provide the real costings that farmers are submitting for concrete and to compare them to their departmental costings. This is to be reported at the next charter meeting, and the comparison will be examined.
The ICMSA Farm Business Committee confirmed that the association has also called for a review of the penalty system for young farmers whereby they face an equivalent fine for the money that they would have received if they had not been rejected from the scheme.
O’Brien said that this fine should be a maximum of one year, given that farmers could have applied for the second year before they knew the outcome of the appeal.