Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. I know ACRES has had a very strong uptake in County Clare and there has been a good experience on the ground for the majority of farmers.

I want to make sure that it is a good experience for everyone, that it works well for everyone and that the system and administration work smoothly. There have been challenges in the first year. It is the only scheme within the CAP programme with which there were particular challenges last year. It is the most complex because it has moved to a results-based system, as is the obligation on all environmental schemes in CAP across the European Union. I wanted to ensure everyone that applied got in so we increased the number of places. I got additional funding and approval to do that. Given the payment challenges we had last year, I also intervened to, for the first time ever, make an interim payment to farmers as I wanted to see them getting money and not waiting on the majority of their payments. By last March, everybody had received either their 85% advance payment or an interim payment of €4,000 or €5,000. Since then, balancing payments have been issuing. As of the end of August, 82% of farmers had received their outstanding balance. The team has been working with the objective of, by the end of this month, having 95% of all balancing payments made.

There are a number of IT systems in place to administer it. Those had to be built and operated for the first time, which obviously brings challenges. The objectives are to ensure the issues we saw in the administration of the first year are fully resolved for year two and that the advance payments for this year are made by the end of November. We are on track to do that.

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