The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has approved 7,023 applications made under tranche 2 of the Targeted Agricultural Modernisation Scheme (TAMS 3).

Over the past week, officials approved an additional 179 applications, meaning that 77% of the total 9,110 applications made under this tranche have now been given the green light.

The latest data, published by the department, shows that 1,375 applications are still being processed, 506 have been rejected and 206 were withdrawn.

The following table provides the latest tranche 2 statistics for the 10 schemes contained in TAMS 3:

The department also confirmed that 210 applications made under tranche 1 of TAMS 3 are "in progress".

Of the 8,203 applications submitted in the initial tranche to the department, 7,167 have been approved, 650 rejected and 176 withdrawn.

Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue previously announced that all eligible applications under tranche 3 of TAMS 3, which closed in mid-April, will be approved.

However, the department has yet to provide an update on how many of these applications have been processed to date.

Applications can currently be submitted under tranche 4 until Friday, September 6, while tranche 5 will close on Friday, December 6, 2024.

Meanwhile, officials from the department recently told the Joint Oireachtas Committee of Agriculture that the reference costs used for TAMS are, in general, “not too far off the mark”.

Farming organisations have repeatedly called for a review of the TAMS reference costs to account for increased costs of materials.

The committee heard that “a fairly extensive review” of the costings will be carried out in 2025.

The costs are based on TAMS receipts submitted by farmers, surveys of engineering and building provider companies and data from the Central Statistic Office (CSO) and Quantity Surveyors Ireland.

Between July 2021 and the end of 2022, the department carried out three reviews and reference costs had increased by nearly 30%.