The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has said that it is working to resolve an issue related to farm partnerships for tranche 2 of the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES).
In response to questions from Teagasc and the Agricultural Consultants Association (ACA), the department said it is aware that advisors were unable to submit an expression of interest for some partnership cases.
The issue also arose in cases where the applicant had moved from a partnership to a herd number or vice versa in 2022 and 2023.
“This issue is currently being work on. If not resolved by the ACRES tranche 2 closing date, advisors impacted will be given an opportunity to submit the application for affected cases at a later date,” DAFM said.
Advisors will only be allowed to submit application for partnership cases highlighted to the department, which must include a screenshot of the error, on or before the ACRES tranche 2 closing date of 5:30p.m on December 13, 2023.
The department also said that another issue involving the submission of Farm Sustainability Plans (FSPs) on the Generic Land Management (GLAM) system has been resolved.
This related to application FSPs with no mapped actions.
ACRES
DAFM has reminded advisors applying for ACRES on behalf of farmers that the following steps must be completed by the closing date for the application to be considered valid:
- Submit an expression of interest/access agreement;
- Prepare and submit a Farm Sustainability Plan (FSP) on GLAM;
- Complete and submit the application to include relevant uploads (rare breeds and soil sampling).
The department also stated that outstanding issued in relation to scorecards for tranche 1 of the scheme have been “relayed to individual advisors”.
Agriland has spoken to one advisor who has been asked by DAFM to rescore around 70 scorecards which they said was “very wearing” and would result in “a lot of lost time”.