Delays for farmers in securing approvals for investments under TAMS show no sign of abating as demand for the scheme remains high.

Some 30% of farmers who submitted an application to tranche 18, which closed on 21 August 2020, will be rolled over into the next tranche because a sufficient budget is not available.

A total of 3,448 new applications were submitted to the tranche, along with 1,240 applications that were rolled over from the previous one. It means that 4,688 applications are under consideration by the Department of Agriculture. Those farmers have applied for work and equipment worth over €63m.

Of these applications, 3,282 will receive approval but 1,406 will be rolled over. Farmers will be notified in the coming days as to whether their application has been approved or rolled over to the next tranche.

Those rolled over are the ones with the lowest ranking applications, based on the Department’s points system. They can withdraw their application and reapply with a new one if they wish.

Those rolled over will enter tranche 19, which is due to close on 30 October 2020.

The Department has confirmed that tranche 20 will open after this and it will close on 31 December 2020.

There had been uncertainty about what would happen to the scheme after this point. However, Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue committed to reopening the scheme for new applications in 2021.

Payments are continuing and a total of €246m has been paid out to date with €1.4m issuing to farmers weekly. There are still 6,000 farmers with approvals who are yet to submit a payment claim.