Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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I appreciate that this is all work we have to do to get it out of the way and clear the decks. However, I am particularly interested in the section of the Minister’s opening statement where he referred to ACRES. The amount of difficulties and problems people are having with that across the country, particularly in the co-operative sector, is something that really needs to be addressed. We have farmers coming to us all the time who are really frustrated, having applied for what they thought was a scheme that would be rolled out over five years. Some of them are two years into it and still do not know their score. They do not know where they stand. The opportunity to carry out other activities on the farm which would enhance their score has basically been denied them because they have not had the opportunity to get the reassessment done. It is an extremely disappointing situation, particularly with ACRES, because farmers want to play their part. They want to do the right thing for the environment and everything else and they deserve to get a payment for the public good they carry out. I think we all concur and agree with that. The least we can expect is that the Department and the Government would keep their side of the bargain and come up with a scheme that is workable and suitable and that farmers can adhere to without too much difficulty and work it out from there. That certainly is not the case with ACRES.

I have raised previously with the Minister the issue of TAMS grants, particularly those for the replacement of slats on slatted sheds.

I still believe there is a difficulty in respect of people getting payments for them. I have been told it is an issue of approval having to come from the office of the Minister to get the payments made. There is a list of people who have been waiting for that for quite some time and still have not received any payments. While it is all well and good coming here and putting a certain amount of money into all of the various schemes, if farmers cannot get access to those schemes or find it difficult and onerous to do so, there needs to be reassessment.

The Minister cannot control the weather nor can he really control the prices. The one thing he should be able to control is the schemes created and administered by the Department, and they continually are failures. We hear about problems with IT and this, that and the other. We should be long past the stage where these schemes are so difficult and continue to cause frustration. For very many years we have heard about simplification within many of these schemes. It seems they keep becoming more complex and difficult. This is an opportunity for the Minister to clear the air in respect of that and set out where and why we are in this situation where we continually have such problems with these schemes.