Agriculture Schemes
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-14
============================================================

Martin Heydon (FG), Kildare South

The challenge is that if everything is a priority then nothing is a priority. I have 11 headings under TAMS and I have to try to manage that. It is the targeted agricultural measures scheme. When demand far outstrips supply something has to give. On that basis it felt fair to me that a residential house be taken out as opposed to farming activity. The intensive energy user on a farm benefited most from being able to apply for TAMS. It is a targeted agricultural measure. There are other ways for residential houses to get in there. I take the point that it would be better to have one central application process. I like that we were able to support farmers in reducing their energy requirements. TAMS is aligned to our climate and sustainability targets. That is renewable energy, but it is also low-emission slurry spreading, support for organic farmers, farm safety, increased slurry storage and improved water quality. All of those things are in the mix with TAMS, so it makes it competitive when demand is high.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:56+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-14