Young farmers who have established their holdings after 2023 are ineligible to apply for support under several key five-year schemes.

These include the Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme (SCEP) and the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES).

Speaking to Agriland, a number of young farmers who have established farm businesses since then expressed concern that support schemes such as these are unavailable to them.

Responding to a question from Agriland about why these new-entrant farmers cannot apply for support under these schemes, DAFM said:

"As the governing EU regulations require that commitments entered into under the [ACRES] scheme must be undertaken for a minimum of five years, the time remaining in the current CAP period would not be sufficient to enable farmers to complete those commitments."

According to DAFM, "there is no provision for new entrants to suckler farming to join SCEP after June 16, 2023".

It said: "SCEP is a five-year programme with an application window from March 20, 2023 to May 22, 2023, with a subsequent 25-calendar day period until June 16, 2023 (with associated late application penalties).

"Undertakings are for a minimum period of five years. By entering the programme, applicants were committing to meet the requirements for a full five-year period."

In relation to new-entrant eligibility to join ACRES, DAFM said:

"ACRES is the flagship environmental scheme provided under Ireland’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Strategic Plan 2023-2027, with €1.5 billion in Exchequer and EU funding allocated over the duration of the Scheme.

"As the number of participants in the scheme, at just over 53,000, is already in excess of the original target capacity of 50,000, it is not proposed to re-open it for new applications."