Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 25 June 2025

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture and Food

Delays in Departmental Scheme Payments: Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine

2:00 am

Mr. Paul Savage:

We will be learning. We have been constantly learning from the experience of ACRES over the last two years in terms of, for example, how we might approach payments over the next number of months, try to simplify our own processes and try to speed up the process for farmers getting payments. We will be doing that and we do it on an ongoing basis. However, when it comes to the next CAP, we have to look at what the new regulatory framework offers us in terms of the new programme. From our perspective, having had the experience of ACRES and having made that big step up in ambition, we would like to be able to maintain the course on ACRES, steer a steady ship, not make major changes and, if anything, just focus on making it more efficient and better, getting payments out more quickly and processing the scheme in a more efficient manner. That will be our focus. We are learning. It is unfortunate, given how the schemes are rolled out in each respective CAP cycle, that we are in that space. We will be doing a lot more planning at a much earlier stage for the next CAP than maybe was the case previously.