Almost €2.5 million has been paid to farmers as part of the hay meadow measure in the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) 2023.
Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue provided the information as part of a response to a parliamentary question from Sinn Féin TD, Martin Kenny.
The TD requested information about how many hectares of land farmers applied for under the measure and how much was paid out.
The minister stated that the actions in ACRES which may be considered as “the hay meadow measure” are low input grassland (LIG) and low input peat grassland (LIPG).
McConalogue added that the late meadow bonus (LMB) is also available as part of those actions and outlined the detail in the table below.
Action No. of applications approved Area approved (ha) Paid to-date Area paid to-date Low Input Grassland 17,722 130,716.25 €1,876,534.20 48,063.86 Low Input Peat Grassland 558 3,252.86 €435,062.46 1,487.74 Late Meadow Bonus 1,247 5,293.03 €137,197.45 2,743.95 Total €2,448,794.11
The minister said that the payment figures reflect the ACRES General applicants who have been paid their advance payment to date.
Meanwhile, Minister McConalogue said “total payment figures will be available after the full year payment calculations are finalised in June”.
ACRES
ACRES General advance payments commenced on December 15, 2023, and approximately 19,719 farmers were paid a total of €88.356 million by early February 2024.
The first interim payment run of €4,000 for the schemes general participants and €5,000 for ACRES Co-operation Project (CP) participants was paid on February 28, 2024, amounting to €113.617 million.
A second interim payment run totalling €5.923 million was processed last month. Thus, a total of 44,780 participants have now received payments totalling €207.8 million in advance and interim payments, according to the minister.
The minister said that the decision to issue interim payments, where advance payments had not yet been received, was particularly due to the “additional complexity” associated with payments to CP participants.