An “urgent” meeting of the national council of the Irish Natura and Hill Farmers’ Association (INHFA) has resulted in a demand from the farm organisation that repayment requests under the Agri Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) be halted.
The meeting was convened on foot of letters received by farmers, sent by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, which the INHFA said “demanded repayment of some or all” of the €5,000 interim payment made earlier this year to some participating farmers.
According to the association, the meeting saw attendees “express intense frustration and anger toward the department’s handling of the scheme”.
According to INHFA president Vincent Roddy, the attendees were “unanimously irate” over the department’s demands.
The meeting resulted in a motion calling on the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, and his department, to “immediately cease all repayment requests”.
At the meeting, a number of “critical failures” by the department that have led to the farm organisation’s motion were outlined.
These include a lack of IT infrastructure to manage the ACRES programme; the lack of scores for farmers, which prevented them from being able to identify and correct errors; and a “lack of CP team engagement”.
The farm organisation claimed that the co-operation project (CP) teams, who are supposed to work closely with farmers in the CP stream of ACRES, “failed to engage with farmers on their landscape actions, which would have helped them increase their payments or maintain their interim payments in the event of low scores”.
The INHFA also slammed the department for the lack of approval for non-productive investments, and planning costs, with the association claiming farmers paid up to €1,000 to ACRES planners.
Furthermore, the INHFA also criticised the government for what it called “inconsistent payment demands”, with some farmers allegedly being asked to repay the full €5,000, while other farmers with “similar farm profiles” were asked to repay widely varying amounts.
The INHFA claimed that, on the commencement of ACRES, farmers were provided with “overly optimistic payment projections, leading to false expectations about the scheme’s potential earnings”.
“The INHFA national council strongly argues that these failures have placed farmers in a precarious financial position, threatening the competitiveness and viability of their operations,” the associations said.
“The council unanimously agreed that none of the €5,000 interim payment should be refunded.”
INHFA president Roddy said: “The department must urgently address these issues and take steps to salvage the ACRES scheme, which is now nearing two years since its inception.”
Roddy advised farmers to, in the meantime, respond to the department’s letters by opting to defer any repayments until the next regular installment of an ACRES payment, which is the latest repayment option open to farmers.
“The association remains steadfast in its commitment to protecting farmers’ interests and ensuring a fair and functional ACRES programme moving forward,” Roddy said.