Some Co-operation Project (CP) teams in the Agri Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) carried out a scoring process on commonages under 10ha in size, despite no obligation under the scheme to do so.

This was confirmed by an official from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine who spoke at the annual general meeting (AGM) of the Agricultural Consultants Association (ACA) today (Thursday, March 6).

This issue seems to have a caused considerable confusion for advisors with clients on impacted commonages, as reported by Agriland previously.

In the middle of last month, the department informed farmers who have shares on commonages under 10ha that their advisors will have to complete a Commonage Farm Plan (CFP) on their behalf.

In a letter to one farmer, dated Monday, February 17, the department said farmers must contact their advisors to complete these plans (in accordance with a plan template on the department website) and submit them through the AgFood system by May 15.

This is the same deadline for submissions of applications under the Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) and related Pillar I measures under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

While CFPs for these commonages are part of the terms and conditions of the scheme, the timing of the department request, so close to the BISS deadline, is leading to concerns over the workload involved for advisors.

This is the first year of the scheme that the department has explicitly requested CFPs for these commonages. However, the fact that CP teams have scored some, but not all, of the commonages under 10ha seems to have only further obscured the matter for advisors.

The fact that the scoring of under-10ha commonages by ACRES CP teams took place without any obligation to do so was confirmed by Josephine Brennan, the principle officer at the department for agri-environment and on-farm investment.

President of the ACA Michael Ryan said today: "In a lot of cases some of those commonages are adjacent to much larger commonages, and quite often...are under 1ha of commonage size.

"A lot of [ACA] members are wondering why the CP teams, didn't actually score those commonages...whereas in many other circumstances adjacent commonages were scored by the CP teams," Ryan added.

The ACA president said that "it's not really a scoring exercise, it's a paper filling exercise" for the advisors, while the commonage share for their clients may be so small that the financial benefit through a payment may be negligible.

In response, Brennan said: "The CP teams were under no obligation to score anything less than 10ha. Their contract was to score all commonages greater than 10ha.

"In some case the CP teams did actually score quite a significant amount of the less-than-10ha [commonages], Brennan added.

She said that in Co. Donegal, as much as 75% of commonages under 10ha were scored by the ACRES CP team.

"It is where it is now in terms of the less-than-10ha, that we do need a Commonage Farm plan on those," Brennan said.

One advisor asked the department officials if the department could provide a list of farmer clients who need these CFPs submitted by May 15.

In response, Brennan asked advisors to send the department a list of their clients participating in ACRES, in which case the department would be able to "say yes or no" in terms of whether they have shares on commonages under 10ha and therefore require CFPs.

That suggestion from Brennan saw a little bit of pushback from the floor, but she cited data protection as the reason that the department could only provide the information in that way.

However, Brennan said the department will consider if lists of impacted farmers can be sent to the advisors concerned.