WITH the department making good progress on TAMS approvals since January, it is likely that nearly all tranche 1 applications will be processed by the end of the month.

Recent figures published by the Department of Agriculture show that 6,181 applications of the 8,203 submitted under tranche 1 of TAMS 3 have been approved to date, marking the approval of ¾ of all applications. A total of 503 applications (6%) have been rejected across the shceme with 204 (2.4%) applications withdrawn.

Progress on the processing of applications has been steady since the first week of January, with circa 500 applications being processed weekly by the Department since then. At this rate, nearly all of the remaining 1,315 applications currently being processed will be complete by the end of March. The Department had previously urged farmers and their agents to continually check correspondence as queries on applications had been going unanswered and risked delaying the processing of applications.