Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There are 8,000 farm families in County Clare and 85% of those families are involved in the suckler beef enterprise. I am one of those. County Clare is the heartland of the suckler system. Ennis mart and Sixmilebridge mart on Saturdays or mid-week are teeming with families and farmers bringing their cattle through the system. It will be very busy this winter with weanlings.

The ACRES scheme is all-important but many farmers do not yet trust it or believe it can work. The ideals of it are good but payments did not reach many people on time. There is still huge concern that the administrative functions of the Department did not crank properly to get applications processed and payments issued. Then there are the scorecards. People want to undertake non-productive investments, NPIs, to increase their funding and the output of their land and to become more viable in terms of ACRES, but all of that detail seems to be lacking. When will the scorecards issue to everyone? I think only 35,000 have issued, yet some farmers are in their second cycle of inspections and do not know where they are at with that. It is not so much the scheme as the operation and administration of it that is the big concern for the farming community.

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