A TD has criticised Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue and his department for what she called a “failure to adequately assess” its capacity to make payments.
According to Carol Nolan, independent TD for Laois-Offaly, “tens of thousands of farmers are now being put in an extremely difficult position” as a consequence of a delay in payments under the Agri Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES).
It emerged earlier this month that payments under the Co-operation Project (CP) stream of the scheme would be delayed until February.
Last week, it was also confirmed that some farmers in the General stream of the scheme would miss out on their advance payments, which had been expected to be made to all farmers in the general scheme.
Only 18,000 farmers in the general scheme will see payments commence this week, around two thirds of the applicants in that stream.
With the General stream farmers, plus the 18,000 in the the CP stream, some 27,000 to 28,000 ACRES participants will experience payment delays.
Nolan referred to this as a “debacle”, saying that the department has “left almost 28,000 farmers in the financial lurch right before Christmas”.
She was speaking after Minister McConalogue responded to her parliamentary question on the issue, in which she asked if the minister would take emergency measures “to ensure full delivery of the ACRES payment pre-Christmas”.
The minister did not refer to any such measures, saying: “I do acknowledge the intensive, focused and collective efforts from all concerned – from farmers, my department, from advisors and from (CP) teams – in working together on the first year of this new scheme.
“However, the decision to accept all applicants into Tranche 1 of ACRES has put significant pressure on the ability to pay all eligible participants in 2023,” he added.
Commenting on Minister McConalogue’s response, Nolan said: “I think the most generous thing I can say is that this is a case of good intentions being confronted being confronted by government over-reach and a clear failure to adequately assess departmental capacity to deliver payments of this volume.
“As a consequence of this, tens of thousands of farmers are now being put in an extremely difficult position which it totally unacceptable.
“The government needs to step up and own the mess that it has created, and it needs to ensure these farmers have ACRES payments in their account before year’s end,” she added.