Aontú Senator Sarah O'Reilly has alleged that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) are "making up excuses" in relation to the delay of issuing Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) payments to farmers.

Speaking in the Seanad yesterday (Thursday, February 20), Senator O'Reilly stated that Aontú were calling for the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Martin Heydon, to appear before the Seanad to explain why so many farmers had experienced delays in receiving payments.

"I've been working on multiple identical cases in my home county of Cavan where farmers have not received payments for a period stretching back to 2023," she said.

Senator O'Reilly said that she had engaged with DAFM around the issue and that: "Initially they tried to suggest it was the farmer's own fault citing penalties as the issue - that they may have failed a farm inspection, or may have previously received an overpayment, and so on."

The Senator from Cavan stated that after raising the issue with DAFM, she received different answers from the department as to why the payments were delayed.

"They began to suggest there was a technical issue, but wouldn't say if this was on their end or the farmers. Then they suggested it was an 'IT issue' and a 'functionality issue,' and then they refused to explain the issue to me," she said.

Senator O'Reilly added that she "was promised in December that 'payments would issue in January' and as recently as yesterday, I was promised that 'payments would issue in mid-March'."

She also said that the ACRES payment has been strongly subscribed to, perhaps to a greater extent than the government had anticipated.

"At this point, I have strong suspicions that the scheme has actually run out of money and that this is why payments are not being made," O'Reilly said.

"This is so frustrating to farmers, especially to elderly farmers in rural areas, who don't know much about computers or IT."

DAFM has said that there are several reasons for the delay in payments, including contract and ownership, partnership cases, Basic Income Support for Sustainability Scheme (BISS)  errors, and alignment of ACRES contract details with the latest BISS information.

There are also a number of scorecard related issues including incorrect scores and scorecards not submitted.

Recently the rural development chair of the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association (ICSA), Edmund Phelan said that the ongoing delays to payments was "undermining" confidence in all schemes.