The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine has told Agriland there will be no further extension to the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) applications deadline past December 7.

The scheme which opened for applications on October 17, had an original closing date of November 21, which was then extended to December 7.

There have been concerns voiced that the extended timeframe might still exclude some farmers.

The chairperson of the Oireachtas Agriculture Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Jackie Cahill, has said the deadline was an “issue” while the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) rural development chair, Michael Biggins, has called on the minister to extend the deadline until the end of the year.

But speaking in Co. Laois today (Thursday, November 24) during a visit to the farm of Laois IFA’s environmental chair, Liam Delaney, Minister Charlie McConalogue said that because the deadline had been extended by two weeks, it will not be moved out any further.

“We’ve pushed as far as we can because we have to be ready for full-year payments next year, so farmers have to be able to participate for the full year. Once all those new applications are in they have to be uploaded and processed onto each farmer’s profile,” he said.

The minister said the timeline was “as tight as it possibly can be”.

“We got it [ACRES] up and running as quickly as we could,” he added.

“We actually launched ACRES before we even got approval from the [European] commission on the basis we were expecting that we would, because we wanted to make sure that it’s up and running for next year.”

He added that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) wants to ensure that as many farmers as possible apply to the scheme and acknowledged that this has “put a lot of pressure on everyone and particular pressure on advisers” over the last number of weeks.

“They’ve worked really, really well across the country to actually meet that challenge and are working massively hard at the moment,” he said.

“It’s put a lot of pressure on farmers as well to get their head fully around the options not just in relation to ACRES but the new schemes that are coming in from January as well.”

The minister said both he and the department are working “to try and ensure that there’s as much accommodation for people as possible”.

“But we’ve pushed the ACRES deadline as far as we can now, so there won’t be any further potential to it extend it,” he added.

John Fitzpatrick, Laois IFA county chair, who also visited Liam Delaney’s farm today told Minister McConalogue that he could not understand why the ACRES scheme “is so complicated”.

“It seems to be outfoxing everyone,” he stated.

Fitzpatrick also said he would like to see the scheme open at the beginning of the year rather than at the end of the year to ensure farmers would receive the payment at the end of next year.

He highlighted to the minister that farmers were willing to help Ireland “reach their targets” on environmental issues – but that they needed more help and assistance to be able to fulfill that.

“We thought with ACRES that we would have a good environmental scheme but it is the most complicate scheme that could be – it’s highly frustrating,” he said.