Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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59. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will provide an overview of the systems his Department has for processing ACRES applications and for making payments to those who are in the scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38020/24]

Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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With regard to ACRES, what systems does the Department have in place in terms of processing the applications that came in this year and, in particular, making payment? What is the Department doing about those that are still outstanding with regard to receiving payment, scores and so on? For the purpose of disclosure, as a farmer, I am a participant in ACRES and I want to put that on the Dáil record.

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. I know ACRES has had a very strong uptake in County Clare and there has been a good experience on the ground for the majority of farmers.

I want to make sure that it is a good experience for everyone, that it works well for everyone and that the system and administration work smoothly. There have been challenges in the first year. It is the only scheme within the CAP programme with which there were particular challenges last year. It is the most complex because it has moved to a results-based system, as is the obligation on all environmental schemes in CAP across the European Union. I wanted to ensure everyone that applied got in so we increased the number of places. I got additional funding and approval to do that. Given the payment challenges we had last year, I also intervened to, for the first time ever, make an interim payment to farmers as I wanted to see them getting money and not waiting on the majority of their payments. By last March, everybody had received either their 85% advance payment or an interim payment of €4,000 or €5,000. Since then, balancing payments have been issuing. As of the end of August, 82% of farmers had received their outstanding balance. The team has been working with the objective of, by the end of this month, having 95% of all balancing payments made.

There are a number of IT systems in place to administer it. Those had to be built and operated for the first time, which obviously brings challenges. The objectives are to ensure the issues we saw in the administration of the first year are fully resolved for year two and that the advance payments for this year are made by the end of November. We are on track to do that.

Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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There are 8,000 farm families in County Clare and 85% of those families are involved in the suckler beef enterprise. I am one of those. County Clare is the heartland of the suckler system. Ennis mart and Sixmilebridge mart on Saturdays or mid-week are teeming with families and farmers bringing their cattle through the system. It will be very busy this winter with weanlings.

The ACRES scheme is all-important but many farmers do not yet trust it or believe it can work. The ideals of it are good but payments did not reach many people on time. There is still huge concern that the administrative functions of the Department did not crank properly to get applications processed and payments issued. Then there are the scorecards. People want to undertake non-productive investments, NPIs, to increase their funding and the output of their land and to become more viable in terms of ACRES, but all of that detail seems to be lacking. When will the scorecards issue to everyone? I think only 35,000 have issued, yet some farmers are in their second cycle of inspections and do not know where they are at with that. It is not so much the scheme as the operation and administration of it that is the big concern for the farming community.

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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We have issued 35,000 scorecards so far. It is important farmers get that so they can look to improve their scores in future years. Farmers do not know how they will score until they get the scorecard. That is a change from previous schemes. The average payments of €5,200 for the co-operation and €5,100 for the general are on track and where we expected them to be, but there is significant variation at farm level depending on the score. There has been significant work in recent months on getting scorecards out, and that continues. Approvals will be given for the NPIs that have been applied for by the end of this year so farmers can undertake works and be paid for them. They will improve their score going forward. We have recently reopened that.

We intervened to ensure that, as of March last year, every farmer had received 85% of their advance payment, or €4,000 or €5,000. We did that because I did not want farmers to be waiting, like in many cases in the past, for their first payment. I understood that where they had carried out the work, it is important they received the payment.

Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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The whole point of the scorecard is to lead farmers to make informed decisions around their NPI. Many farmers, including myself, are being contacted by farm planners. They are giving us the menu of options and most of us are standing back because we do not have a scorecard and are not sure what we are doing. Should we go off and invest this if it will not change things materially? It would offer comfort if the Minister were to say that when scorecards are eventually issued to everyone, the potential increased payment will be backdated for the period in which they were sitting at home waiting for it to issue.

For budget 2025, which is imminent, and other budgets and schemes that may follow, is there an administrative wing in the Department large enough to roll this out? The Minister is responsible for leading this out and he has done a very good job in his Department along with the Ministers of State, but is the administrative Civil Service wing large enough to carry out these schemes and ensure that they are well oiled and that payments go out on time? It is particularly devastating for a farmer who contacted me recently. The farm is locked in probate because someone passed away. He is locked out of payments for all of 2023 and 2024 and they are backlogged. He will eventually get them but it is devastating. You would not ask somebody to take on the local shop, supermarket or other enterprise following the death of a parent and expect them to run it. Farms run on empty very often, so this payment is all-important.

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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Probate is always an issue and will always, unfortunately, hold up a payment. Probate has to be completed because there has to be legal certainty as to who the payment is made to after a death. That can always be challenged during the probate process so the Department has to have that certainty. That is an issue we cannot resolve but will try to work through, being as supportive as we can.

Across the schemes there has been a strong outcome. The new schemes have got up and running well. The most complex and challenging has been ACRES but much work, effort and resources have gone into it. I am confident going into year two that the issues that arose in year one will be ironed out and resolved. We have worked hard over the course of this year to address those issues. It has not been satisfactory in terms of the delays. That has been part of the administrative challenge of it. Everybody has worked hard to get it going and we have taken the intervention steps as well to ensure farmers get payment. The scoring is really important and scorecards continue to go out. The payment the farmer gets is entirely dependent on the score. We will be making announcements and giving approvals-----

Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail)
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Will you backdate it?

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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The score informs the payment. Where a farmer gets the full payment, it is based on the score and only occurs when the score is finalised. On giving farmers approval for NPIs, every farmer in the co-operation scheme has €17,500 available to spend over the course of ACRES to take steps which will see improvements in the scores at farm level. That €17,500 is still available to every farmer. We want to make sure farmers get those approvals to start drawing that €17,500 down so it can impact their score and their base payment.