The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has confirmed that it issued scheme payments to farmers worth €11 million in the first week of 2024.
The data shows that €4.4 million was paid to farmers under the Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) and Complimentary Redistributive Income Support for Sustainability (CRISS).
The department said that total payments for the 2023 schemes up to January 5 now stands at almost €794 million.
DAFM noted that this figure includes 2023 Complementary Income Support for Young Farmers (€22.3 million) and 2023 National Reserve (€2.3 million)
Over 117,000 farmers have now received payments under these schemes.
The department issued €4.9 million in eco-scheme payments to farmers in the first week of the year.
Almost 115,000 farmers have now been issued with eco-scheme payments totalling €292 million.
€1.7 million was paid to farmers in the department’s first payment run of 2024 for the Areas of Natural Constraint (ANC) scheme.
Payments
The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue said yesterday (Tuesday, January 9) that he is “confident” that working through the farmers’ charter this year will avoid delayed payments.
The minister made the comments at the 69th annual general meeting (AGM) of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA).
“This year in terms of setting the best possible timelines to pay the highest possible percentages, we wrote to farmers back in March notifying some changes,” he said.
“Then we worked all hands on deck to meet those payment dates and we achieved 90% of the dates we set out,” Minister McConalogue added.
The minister said that some payments for Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) were delayed, due to the “complexity” of the Cooperation Project (CP) stream.
The delays to farm payments have been slammed by farm organisations and politicians who have pointed to the high costs facing farmers.