Positive signal on TAMS ‘counts for nothing’ without formal approval
Modern dairy farming. Cattle herd in rustic barn setting. Livestock husbandry. Domestic cattle grazing in rural pasture. Countryside ranch life. Holstein cows in modern
Commenting on the announcement by the Minister of Agriculture, Food and the Marine that all TAMS Tranche 3 applications will be fully approved, the Deputy President of ICMSA, Eamon Carroll, said that while welcome, Minister McConalogue’s announcement counts for nothing without formal notices of acceptance being issued to the applicants concerned.
Mr Carroll, who also serves as Chairperson of ICMSA Farm and Rural Affairs Committee, said that farmers would be unable to proceed until such formal notification was received and the delays involved – already ridiculous – would not be solved till those formal notifications were issued.
“The reality is that there are still applicants from Tranche 1 who have yet to receive formal approval despite the fact that their closing date was summer 2023, and we know of cases where applications have been submitted for over a year.
“The Department can take as long as they like to issue an approval, while, at the same time, writing to some farmers with a query telling them to respond within 20 days or their application will be rejected in full.
“This is the kind of complete double-standard that has made farmer interaction with the Department so fraught and irksome.” Mr Carroll questioned how farmers could have the confidence to invest if the approval of their investments was delayed so long that the building price quotes contained were completely out of date, or the Nitrates regulations had changed in the time between the application and approval.
Mr Carroll said that the Department needed to prioritise staff to work through this backlog in the next two months and all Tranches 1 through 3 need to be approved “formally and in notification” by the end of June.
Mr Carroll added that the four tranches scheduled for next year should be ‘set in stone’ per the ICMSA request in the new Charter of Farmers Rights. He said it was imperative that the dates were on a quarterly basis and if that degree of certainty was established then farmers and their advisors would be able to respond with confidence.
