Minister Far Too Casual About ACRES Debacle

Reacting to comments made by Minister Heydon in the Seanad, IFA President Francie Gorman said the Minister is out of touch and disconnected from the stress and financial hardship endured by farm families because of his Department’s failure to deliver ACRES payments as contracted.

“How can the Minister say ‘real progress’ is being made when there are still thousands awaiting ACRES payments. These payments were due last November, with over 2,000 of these awaiting balancing 2023 payments as well. It’s an insult to these farm families to call that progress,” he said.

IFA Rural Development Chair John Curran said the Minister and the Department need to own this mess.

“They created ACRES. They haven’t the IT functionality to progress cases, even at this stage in year three of a five-year scheme. They have declined to pay an interim payment to impacted farm families as IFA have called for,” he said. 

“There are farmers out there forced to sell breeding stock just to keep the show on the road. That is how serious it is, and through no fault of their own,” John Curran said.

‘Farmers entered ACRES in good faith. They have incurred costs and did what was required of them. The Department need to do the same, now. Enough reputational damage, to the Department and the ACRES scheme, has occurred already,” he said.

‘The Minister needs to re-evaluate his position on delivering an interim payment from national funding and immediately alleviate the financial pressures on impacted farmers – many of whom may also have had to deal with the costs and aftermath of Storm Eowyn and Storm Darragh,” he said. 

IFA Hill Chair Caillin Conneely said farmers are sick of ACRES at this stage, and payments aside, there are still key scheme elements which still aren’t fully functional/operational yet – the Non-Productive Investments and Landscape Actions – elements which have potential to be a win-win for the environment and the farmer.

“It’s just not good enough. Farmers had to wait almost a year for decisions for the first round of Non-Productive Investments, and DAFM are saying it could be well into the second half of the year before there will be a system for claims/payments.

“That’s nearly 2 years after the application window closed, and Landscape Actions aren’t even available of open for applications yet,” Caillin Conneely said.

“These are the means by which farmers can improve for the environment and boost their scores. The delays also mean that farmers are being asked to make, upfront, much larger investments, in a shorter timeframe, to get anywhere close to the income potential (€52,500) they were promised by the DAFM over the lifetime of the scheme, and which they signed up for”.

“For a €1.5bn flagship agri-environmental scheme. ACRES hasn’t delivered for farmers and it hasn’t delivered for the environment either. It’s very disappointing,” he concluded.