Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Independent)
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60. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine his views on the challenges with the ACRES scheme, and the repayments that farmers are being requested to repay; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38143/24]

Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Independent)
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I ask the Minister his views on the challenges with ACRES and the repayments farmers are being requested to make. Go raibh maith agat.

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy. We have discussed it in a fair bit of detail. In terms of uptake, we have had 55,000 farmers apply. The Government has intervened to make sure every farmer who applied got approval and was taken into it when they applied. We had 46,000 applications in tranche 1. We had projected that 30,000 would apply but we intervened to accept all 46,000 applications. About 10,000 farmers applied in tranche 2. Again, we intervened and took all of those in. It is the one scheme in which there were challenges in relation to payments last year. I intervened to issue an interim payment to everyone who had not received their advance. It will always be stalled until probate is completed but, apart from a small number of instances like that, every farmer in ACRES by the end of March had received their 85% advance, or €4,000 or €5,000. Balancing payments started to issue over the summer and, as of the end of last month, 82% had received their balancing payment. Work is under way with the objective of getting that up to 95% by the end of this month.

I want ACRES to work well and be a positive experience for every farmer. It has been, in the vast majority of instances. Payments have been strong in most instances but not all. There has been frustration concerning the uncertainty around scores. I am constantly monitoring the scheme because I want it to be a positive experience for everyone and to make sure, as we get into year two, payments happen when they should and on schedule. We are on track to make advance payments to ACRES farmers by the end of November. I also want to see farmers who have already applied get approval for NPIs.

It has also been opened up for new applications now to make sure farmers get approval in a timely fashion for those too.

Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Independent)
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Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire. I appreciate, and I believe a lot of farmers appreciate, that there has been a huge uptake on ACRES and that this would have caused difficulties. At this point, however, they are frustrated and their patience has waned. I will give a bit of context. I recently met with members of the IFA in my office in Clare. They outlined their full discontent at this situation and especially about the repayments. For context, in County Clare agriculture contributes over €1 billion to the local economy and 12,000 people are employed directly or indirectly in agriculture. More than 20% of the working population in County Clare is involved in agri-related jobs and there are more than 6,000 individual family farms in the county. We know the background and the history and that they were to receive their payments in November. Some did receive it in February and March, as the Minister has outlined. The Minister said that 95% will have received the payment by the end of this month and this is what he is aiming for. I am just curious as to why that would not be the full 100%. Is there an appeals process in respect of the scorecards for farmers? Is this an independent individual who would process those appeals?

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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There are a number of issues that have to be worked through in cases where people have not been paid yet. As we discussed with Deputy Crowe earlier there are probate issues, for example, which every year hold up a number of payments. The team is working through it with the objective of getting it up to 95% and, as I said previously, 82% had received their full payment at the end of last year. Everyone in this scheme has received either 85% of what they are due or either €4,000 or €5,000. As a result of the interim payment approach that was taken to make sure we could get payments out to people, some of them actually received a higher payment than they were due. We put in place a process to make sure that in those instances farmers can ensure it is netted off future ACRES payments and contained within their overall ACRES payment structure.

With regard to the scores, the first port of call is engaging with the ACRES co-operation project, CP, teams that have done the scoring. At the moment the CP teams are holding meetings with farmers to discuss the scores that different commonages have had and updating farmers on the reasons behind those scores.

Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Independent)
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I believe that an appeals process will be beneficial. I hope those meetings will result in a resolution for everybody involved. In the latter half of year 2 the scorecards are only coming out. For the farmers themselves, the repayments and all of that issue was based on the scorecards but they could not access their own scorecards. That was an issue.

Family farms are struggling. I know myself that when one is struggling financially any delays in payments, or any repayments where one must pay money back, have a detrimental impact on the whole household. I do not believe it is appropriate they have had to go through this process as there have been so many difficulties. It is hard to see how their payments for this year will be on time in November if, by the end of September, not all 100% have received their payment from last year.

There are a number of other issues that I did not get to touch on here today but it is really important that the Minister look at an appeals process for farmers.

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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With regard to querying scores, the facility is in place for engaging with the local CP teams and having it assessed.

On the wider point in respect of payments, we have worked hard to make sure farmers could get payments. Obviously, the objective was to ensure everybody got their 85% advance but in the absence of that we made the interim payment. I accept the point Deputy Wynne is making about cases where the interim payment would end up being higher. For example, if one is on the CP stream, the interim payment was €5,000. If the score was on the commonage and it proved to be smaller, then there may be a repayment due or an overpayment in place. In these instances we have given the facility to make sure that is taken off future ACRES payments and netted against future ACRES payments. This is to be as understanding as possible. The objective has always been to serve farmers in the best way possible. I made the high interim payment because I felt that on balance it was better to get farmers paid more earlier, rather than them not being paid enough, and then having it netted in future ACRES payments. I wanted to make sure we were not interrupting cash flow for farmers for important payments they were waiting on.