Agri-Business
The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) confirmed just five farmers have sought a review of their ACRES commonage scores.
Some CP teams in ACRES carried out a scoring process on commonages under 10ha in size, despite no obligation under the scheme to do so.
More than 430,000ha of eligible commonages were declared last year under area-based schemes according to minister.
A further issue for the under-fire ACRES programme seems to have arisen in relation to farm plans for commonages under 10ha.
Rural Life
The Department of Agriculture has been called on to provide clarity on landscape action (LA) options for commonage farmers in ACRES.
Results from commonage screening in several ACRES Co-operation (CP) regions are highlighting a positive outlook for sustainable agriculture.
Agri Politics
The INHFA said that an increase in walking festivals in the west of the country is "driving farmer concern".
Environment
The assessment of 97,000ha spread out amongst 1,300 commonages has been completed in just over four months for ACRES scoring.
A total of 83% of commonages have been assessed, according to the latest update from the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) assessors.
Farmers will not tolerate delays to their GLAS payments for 2017, and expect the problems encountered with 2016 payments not to be repeated.
'Commonage farmers who have rented or bought a commonage share since June 2015 are being discriminated against by being denied access to GLAS 3'
The mammoth task of assessing Ireland's 2,600 commonages is in its early stages in sites right across the country.
