Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. As he is aware, farmers operate like any other business and structure their finances around payment dates. Farmers have spent significant amounts of money to introduce environmental measures on the basis of the assumption that they would receive payments in November to cover those costs. Given the delays, they are unable to pay their bills and interest can then accrue.

We cannot have a situation where people are left worse off when they sign up for a scheme to try to make a positive environmental impact. It is really important to try to instill confidence in these schemes. A way to potentially restore that trust in the scheme would be to ensure that farmers receive payments as soon as possible. I hear what the Minister is saying, but advance payments are common practice. Can the Minister consider administering some proportion of the ACRES payments to all the applicants before Christmas?

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