Over 1,600 farmers are still awaiting their advance payments for participation in the Agri Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) for 2024.

As well as that, some 3,300 farmers are still waiting on a balancing payment for last year.

That's according to Paul Savage, a senior inspector at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, who was speaking at a meeting of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture and Food today (Wednesday, June 25).

The theme of today's committee meeting was scheme payments, with the long-running delay in payments to farmers in ACRES generating the large majority of today's discussion.

Savage acknowledged that there have been delays in getting payments out to farmers for their participation in ACRES, particularly in respect of those who joined in 2023, a number of whom have gone the entire scheme without receiving their full ACRES payment, despite the scheme now having run half of its five-year course.

"These delays are sincerely regretted by the department and we have been doing everything we can to both catch up with 2023 payments and to pay all farmers for their participation in the scheme in 2024 as soon as possible, and we've been making really good progress," he said.

In the case of 2023, almost 99% of participants are fully paid at this point, according to the department official.

A total of 578 farmers are yet to receive their final payments for 2023. Of these, 300 received a one-off interim payment of €4,000 or €5,000 in spring of 2024 (the interim payments were made last year to bridge the shortfall in cashflow for farmers as a result of the delays).

Savage said last year's interim payments will, in many cases, cover the entire amount of the payment due.

For the 2024 scheme year, Savage said that advance payments have now been made to more than 96% of participants, and balancing payments have been made to almost 89% of participants.

By the end of this week, after the next ACRES payment run, the department official expects those 2024 numbers to reach 97-98% for advance payments, and 94-95% for balancing payments.

The number of farmers who have not yet been paid an advance payment for 2024 is 1,635, while around 3,300 farmers have not been paid a balancing payment for last year.

Savage said that those who are waiting for those balancing payments would have received the advance payments at this stage, apart from the 1,635 still waiting on advance payments.

The department official said that he expects these payments to be cleared in the next number of weeks, but would not be drawn on a more concrete timeline than that.

However, it certainly appears that there will still be ACRES payments outstanding into July.

Savage said that, in some cases, participants may not have supplied documentation, and he called on them to supply all outstanding documentation as soon as possible to allow their payments to be processed in the coming weeks.