Joe Cooney (Clare, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister and his officials for coming today and for the presentation at the start of the meeting.

I use the word "simplify" a lot. We are trying to encourage young people to get involved in farming, but with the way things are going at the moment with the different schemes and the red tape and criteria around them, it is not encouraging them. We need to look at that going forward. There are a lot of young people who would love to get involved in farming. If we can support and help them, we will encourage them to get involved.

I compliment the Minister on what he is doing regarding the payments for ACRES since he took office. It was a serious issue last year, before that, and in the early part of this year, but he has brought it from more than 13,000 applications down to 5,000. Fantastic work has been done and I hope those 5,000 - probably some of which have issues on their own side - will be sorted out sooner than later.

Going forward, will we have this issue again? Has this been sorted out once and for all so that a date can be put out when farmers will get their payments and the Department will meet that deadline? What is the update on that?