Dr. Frank O'Mara:

That is always an issue for farmers with schemes and even for us. There is a huge administrative load and a huge amount of detail required with regard to applications for all these schemes. I would advise all farmers to inquire about the scheme and talk to their advisers, whether it is a Teagasc adviser or a private consultant. Generally, there is not as much work involved as people may have thought at the start. There seems to be very good buy-in among farmers for ACRES. As Mr. Curran stated, 17,000 of our clients have contacted us to make an application on their behalf or at least to come in to talk to us about it. We believe the vast majority of them will go through with their application. We find that once farmers get engaged with ACRES, they are quite positive about it and there is high demand to get into it. Having the time to get all the applications done is the issue we face, rather than reluctance of farmers to engage with the scheme.