Mayo farmers currently top of the ACRES payments leaderboard

A total of 5,495 farmers in Co. Mayo are currently top of the Agri Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) payments leader board after receiving payments totaling more than €25.3 million.

According to latest figures released by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) the three counties where farmers have received the largest total payments amount include Mayo, Galway and Donegal.

Meanwhile currently bottom of the payments leader board are farmers in counties Dublin, Louth and and Kildare.

According to DAFM the total payments to date to 43,430 farmers amounts to €201,983,219.63.

In response to a parliamentary question tabled by Fianna Fáil Cork north-west TD, Michael Moynihan, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue, said “intensive work will continue on the calculation of the payments due to farmers under ACRES”.

ACRES

Both the minister and DAFM have come under intense criticism for delays to the ACRES payment schedule.

Although 17,000 ACRES General farmers received a payment in December 2023 the minister was forced to confirm that payments to 18,000 farmers participating in the Co-operative Project (CPs) stream would not “issue” until February 2024.

On February 28, Minister McConalogue then announced that there would be an interim payment to participants in tranche 1 of ACRES who had “not yet received their advance payments for participation in the scheme”.

He said previously that: “The combination of the numbers involved, the complexity of the payment calculations and this being the first year of the ACRES Scheme has meant that the processing of advance payments is taking longer than envisaged”.

He told Deputy Moynihan that interim payments will “issue to the remaining participants in the coming weeks”.

Minister McConalogue also added that further payments, which will issue to farmers in June, “will take into account the interim payments already made to the relevant participants”.

According to DAFM the total amount of ACRES payments paid out to date – including interim payments – by county and the total number of farmers paid in each county is as follows: