Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 5 October 2021
786. Deputy Dara Calleary asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will give consideration to the inclusion of equine farming in all Department funding schemes, for example, TAMS; if he will address its exclusion from these schemes to date; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48241/21]
View answerThere are a wide variety of items available under the suite of seven measures under TAMS. Grant aid is available for horse stocks under the Animal Welfare and Nutrient Storage Scheme and the Young Farmer Capital Investment Scheme. To date, total expenditure under the seven measures of the TAMS, including transitional expenditure, has reached in excess of €310m with commitments of an additional €145m made to scheme participants who have yet to draw down those grants.
Some 44,273 applications have been approved under the scheme. All outstanding approvals issued represent potential outstanding liabilities for the Department and we must have a budget in place to pay these claims. As a result, it is not possible to consider adding additional items such as investment items for equine farming to the comprehensive list of investment items already available under TAMS.
No decision has been made in relation to the interventions to be included in the CAP Strategic Plan (CSP)(2023-2027). To allow for the submission of the draft CSP by 1st January 2022, the Department facilitated a public consultation on the draft CSP and written submissions were invited from interested parties by the closing date of 3rd September 2021. These submissions are currently being evaluated and ongoing stakeholder consultations are continuing to take place.
