The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine has confirmed that a “small number” of farmers who are not participating in the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) have received a related payment.
According to Minister Charlie McConalogue, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) “is aware of a small number of cases that were issued a payment in error due to an administrative error”.
The minister acknowledged the mistake had been made in response to a parliamentary question raised by the Independent TD, Michael Healy-Rae.
Deputy Healy-Rae had asked the minister to explain why farmers who are not in ACRES had received an interim payment of €5,000.
ACRES
Farm organisations have previously described the roll out of ACRES payments as a “shambles”.
Minister McConalogue was first forced to admit last December (2023) that some payments to farmers would be delayed.
He blamed this on a combination of the numbers involved and “the complexity of the payment calculations”.
The minister had also said that because it was the first year of the scheme it had “meant that the processing of advance payments is taking longer than envisaged”.
But farm organisations had also accused the minister of “leaving farmers in the dark about important payments”.
Interim payment
Last month Minister McConalogue announced an interim payment for participants in tranche 1 of ACRES who had not received advance payments for participation in the scheme.
He told Deputy Healy-Rae that” due to the additional complexity associated with payments to Co-operation Project (CP) participants, it was agreed to make an interim payment to all the remaining applicants who had not received an ACRES payment”.
“The first interim payment run of €4,000 for ACRES General participants and €5,000 for ACRES CP participants was paid on the February 28, 2024, and came to a total of €113,617,000,” the minister stated.
According to the minister a second run “totalling €5,923,000” was due to arrive in bank accounts last week.
Minister McConalogue also detailed that “44,780 participants will have received ACRES payments totalling €207.8 million”.
But he also acknowledged that some farmers who are not participating in the scheme had also received a €5,000 payment.
According to the minister this payment to non-participating ACRES farmers has “now been rectified”.