The TAMS II grant scheme for farm building work is expected to be opened by Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney in the coming weeks. His officials in the Department of Agriculture have drawn up all details for the new scheme, but are awaiting approval from the European Commission.

TAMS II is one of the schemes in Ireland’s Rural Development Programme 2014-2020, which is now receiving final scrutiny in Brussels.

There is pent-up demand for farm building grant aid. That is shown by the steady flow of queries into the Irish Farmers Journal, local Department of Agriculture and Teagasc offices and farm organisations.

Farm building contractors also report that many farmers have put work on hold in the hope of getting grant aid on it under the new scheme. That makes it difficult for a builder trying to hold a team of workers together.

Minister Coveney and his officials have already announced much of the details of TAMS II. We know how much funding is available, the grant rates, how applications will be made and – broadly – what farmers will be eligible. However, we don’t yet know the exact details of what structures will be eligible for grant aid. That will be announced in the coming weeks and no doubt there will be a few surprises.

Here, we present the details known so far about the scheme.

Grant rate

The scheme will pay 40% grant aid on qualifying expenditure to general applicants. There will be a 20% top-up for young startup farmers, bringing their grant rate to 60%.

There will be a super ceiling of €80,000 investment for all applications made by any individual farmer over the seven years of the scheme.

The Department expects to give grant support to 6,300 young farmers, plus another 19,000 other farmers under the scheme, or approximately 25,000 farmers in all.

Applications

Minister Coveney and his officials have stated that TAMS II will operate in a similar manner to TAMS I. So, we expect that:

  • Funding will be shared over the seven years of the scheme. This will again prevent the bulk of funding being taken up in the first few years and will be helpful to farmers who are starting or building up their enterprises.
  • A number of application rounds, or tranches, are likely to operate each year. There will probably be four three-month tranches each year.
  • Funding will be ringfenced for different enterprises or headings and available to be applied for over the full course of the multiyear scheme. Again, this ensures that the funding pool is spread around among a large number of farmers in different enterprises.
  • With significantly more funding available in TAMS II, the number of headings under which grant aid will be paid will be wider. In addition to dairy equipment, the minister has already signalled that grant aid is likely to be available for animal housing, slurry storage, including on tillage farms, and efficiency measures on pig and poultry farms. A farm safety scheme will operate, although it might not open in 2015.
  • Even with more funding available, a system of priority ranking will be operated. As well as the pluses, the TAMS system has had one or two minuses and these are likely to continue into TAMS II. Many farmers have been frustrated by delays in receiving approval for applications. Application rounds ran for three months but processing of applications took some additional weeks.

    • An applicant unsuccessful in one round was then considered in the next round but, if successful, the decision came seven to eight months after he initially applied.

    One main reason for the length of time taken for processing applications has been the need to apply ranking criteria. All applications had to be centrally processed before this could be done. Processing could not start until each three-month application window had ended.

    First to open

    The minister has stated that a new dairy equipment scheme will be the first TAMS II scheme to open. Also among the first to open will be a general grant aid scheme for startup young farmers. This scheme could cover investment in general farm buildings.

    Super ceiling

    Farmer applicants to the TAMS II scheme face a “super ceiling” of €80,000 per holding over the seven years of the Rural Development Programme. This is a ceiling on overall investment amount – not a ceiling on actual grant aid. Therefore, the maximum amount of grant aid a general applicant can claim over the seven years is €32,000. The maximum amount that can be claimed by a qualifying startup farmer is €48,000.

  • The one super ceiling applies even if a farmer applies to more than one TAMS II scheme or applies to the same one twice.
  • In addition, each individual TAMS II scheme will continue to have its own individual ceiling, as operated in TAMS I. For example, in TAMS I, the Dairy Equipment Scheme had an investment ceiling of €40,000 per holding for milking machine equipment and €25,000 for cooling, refrigeration and storage equipment. In the sheep handling/fencing schemes, the maximum investment amount was €25,000. Here is a simple example: a farmer applies under three different TAMS II schemes, each with a maximum eligible investment ceiling of €30,000. The farmer spends €30,000 under each scheme. Instead of the total grant payable being calculated on €90,000, the super ceiling kicks in and the grant will be calculated on the basis of €80,000.

    • However, investment by farmers in specialised slurry spreading is excluded from this ceiling so as to encourage farmers to invest in low-emission technology.

    The scheme has been allocated total funding of €395m for the period of the RDP, which covers 2014 to 2020. The scheme was initially announced with a smaller funding pool – €100m less. But, in 2014, Minister Coveney announced the higher funding amount.

    Farmers applying to TAMS II will themselves provide the balancing 60% of investments (40% in the case of startup farmers).

    When farmer spend is included, total spending under the scheme will be €900m. The crude average spend will be €141m per year over seven years.

    Of course, the scheme wasn’t open for 2014, so no funding was paid out last year.

    Spend will be less than average in 2015 and higher than average in later years.

    Despite the RDP running to 2020, it is likely that some TAMS II schemes will be open for applications in 2021 and that payout of grant money will continue into 2021 and 2022 as the scheme winds down.

    The €395m funding for TAMS II – over seven years – is significantly higher than the €90m that was available in TAMS I, which ran over four years.

    As in TAMS I, any funding that is not taken up will be reallocated to different schemes where demand was higher. No TAMS I funding has been returned to the European Commission. Thus, when TAMS I opened, €8m was allocated for water harvesting. However, this scheme met little enthusiasm from farmers and eventually about €7.8m of this money was transferred to the Dairy Equipment Scheme.

    Likewise, some funding was transferred from the sow welfare and poultry schemes. The original allocation of €45m for dairy equipment ended up being boosted to close to €60m, two-thirds of all funding.

    Expansion

    With milk quotas now abolished and dairy expansion under way, Minister Coveney has stated that a new dairy equipment scheme in TAMS II will receive a large allocation.

    And if funding is not taken up by farmers under schemes such as slurry storage on tillage farms, then funding from these headings is likely to be reallocated to other schemes which are seeing higher demand, such as dairying.

  • An applicant must apply within five years of setting up in farming.
  • A person will be deemed to be set up in farming after taking control of 15ha or more of land.
  • The maximum age for qualifying for the top is 40, up from 35 years in earlier schemes.