Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Martin Heydon has said that it is his department's "overarching objective" to make all outstanding payments for 2023 and 2024 under the Agri Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) by the end of June.

Speaking in response to a parliamentary question from Sinn Féin Waterford TD Conor McGuinness, Minister Heydon said the department will be issuing regular online updates over the coming period on the progress being made on payments.

He said that there are a number of reasons impacting the timeline of payments, including instances where farmers have applied to transfer their contracts; issues in relation to the submission of scorecards for the results-based payment; and the completion of outstanding IT functionality.

According to the minister, the ongoing payment runs, which are taking place on a fortnightly basis for all cases that have passed the required validation checks, "are evidence that this work is being prioritised, and that issues are being resolved as quickly as possible".

Asked if he could provide the total value of all payments not yet made for 2023 and 2024, the minister said: "It is not possible to calculate the value of payments that have not yet issued for ACRES.

"Results-based scoring is included within ACRES. Until these scores are converted to a monetary value within the payment system and other factors taken into account, such as changes to parcels, it is not possible to determine the final value of an ACRES contract," he said.

Minister Heydon did confirm that a total of €247.1 million has been paid to 42,182 participants, some 94% of all participants.

This number of participants is broken down into 25,332 in the ACRES General stream, and 16,860 in the ACRES Co-operation stream.

Around 2,764 ACRES contracts have not yet been finalised for 2023. The minister said that the vast majority of these participants have already received either an advance or an interim payment for that scheme year.

For the 2024 scheme year, 42,128 active participants, representing just under 78% of active participating herds, have received advance payments totalling €181.75 million.

This figure of participants includes 34,667 participants in tranche 1 and 7,461 tranche 2 participants.

The remaining 12,068 participants are still awaiting their 2024 advance payments, the minister confirmed.