The Rural Independent group of TDs have called on the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, to clarify the new rules for farmers under the Agri Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES).
They claim the new rules are “unreasonable and will penalise farmers for cutting turf or not having the correct stocking rates.”
The Rural Independent group leader, Deputy Mattie McGrath, believes that the rules are a backdoor method to further reduce turf cutting and to deny farmers the payments they deserve.
Deputy McGrath said that farmers are currently in limbo over the issue, as the condition to prohibit or ban the cutting of turf on lands declared for ACRES would have significant implications for farmers who rely on the payment “to make ends meet”.
With the turf-cutting season now underway, Deputy McGrath has urged the minister to intervene urgently and allow turf-cutting to proceed without impacting payments.
He added:
“Otherwise, he will be facilitating a backdoor ban on turf cutting, which will have devastating effects on farmers and their livelihoods.”
ACRES
Meanwhile a Sinn Féin TD has also warned that confusion exists around the impact of turf cutting on eligibility and also payments for farmers under ACRES.
Rose Conway-Walsh previously called on Minister McConalogue to clarify scoring under the scheme for farmers with commonage land where there is active turf cutting.
“As we know there has been a large uptake of new ACRES scheme among farmers in Mayo and along the western seaboard.
The amount of money received by farmers will largely be determined by the scoring of their fields for biodiversity,” Deputy Conway-Walsh said.
She added:
“A lot of farmers in the west will be relying on commonage and mountain lands to generate these scores where parcels are marked out of 10.
“An issue has arisen with the scoring of mountain land where active turf cutting means all farmers on that commonage will lose marks even if the turf cutter with the turbary rights is not one of those farmers.”
The Mayo TD claimed that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) is currently advising that active turf cutting on a parcel of land will result in a 30% reduction in scoring.
Turf
Deputy Conway-Walsh said that most commonage land will have active turf cutting and a 30% reduction for all shareholders would result in a drastic reduction in payments for farmers.
She added:
“It is now the time of year when people are getting ready to cut turf and they are unsure how this will affect ACRES payments. They may decide not to cut but find that others will do so leading to all payments being reduced.
“Previous schemes like the Wild Atlantic Nature Scheme mapped the area of mountain being cut and excluded that from scoring while the rest of the mountain parcel was scored normally.
“Farmers are responsible custodians of their lands and are making huge efforts to embrace biodiversity and tackle climate change. They need clarity and certainty of income to play their part.”