The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine has told the Dáil today (Tuesday, December 13) that he would “love” to bring all 46,000 farmers who have applied in to the new Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES).
Deputy Christopher O’Sullivan, Fianna Fáil TD for Cork South, asked the minister to extend the ACRES scheme which currently has funding in the budget for 30,000 places.
The scheme was expected to attract 30,000 applicants but a total of 46,000 applications were received according to the Department for Agriculture, Food and the Marine.
Deputy O’Sullivan said that the new ACRES will “reward farmers for working with biodiversity” and asked if the capacity of the scheme could be extended to include all appplicants.
Minister Charlie McConalogue told the Dáil that the uptake and “appetite” for the scheme had proved very strong from farm families.
He said:
“The expectation was that we would have around 30,000 in the first tranche. I would love to bring all 46,000 in, we want to be able to enable all farm families to be able to participate in this and to back them both in terms of their farm income and also in terms of doing work in terms of contributing to the environment”.
But the Minister for Agriculture cautioned that this may not be an easy task.
“There are a number of issues I have to work through to see if that’s possible first of all the budget, second of all the process and the capacity of the system as to whether or not it would be able to manage that and in order to be able to ensure it gets up and runs smoothly that it works well and people get paid and on time as well,” he added.
Minister McConalogue said he was was currently working through these issues.
He outlined to the Dáil:
“I don’t know yet whether it will be possible DeputyO’ Sullivan if it is possible I certainly would like to do it, but it’s great to see such a strong response from the farming community and certainly as we’ve always been doing we’re looking to continue to back farm families.”
Earlier this week the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) warned that an estimated 16,000 farmers could lose out on an environmental scheme payment in 2023 because ACRES had been oversubscribed.
IFA’s rural development committee chair, Michael Biggins, told Agriland that farmers, particularly sheep and livestock farmers, “depend” on environmental scheme payments as a crucial source of revenue and cannot afford a “gap” year in payments.