Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Deputy Currie as well. I look forward to working with her again in her capacity as a Teachta Dála. I worked with her before on North-South matters of peace and reconciliation. That is very important to both of us. I look forward to working in that vein with Deputy Currie.

I congratulate the Minister, Deputy Heydon, on his new role. The first challenge for him to tackle is the need to sort out the ACRES debacle. I spoke to him about it yesterday. Honest to God, I have never seen anything like the situation with ACRES. I have been dealing with agriculture since long before I entered politics. This is the worst ever. I would nearly say that the Minister should leave other things aside to get this sorted for now. I have been in contact with the ACRES section in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine on a daily basis for weeks and months now. Several thousand farmers in County Mayo and in other counties are still without payment. My question for the Minister is this: when will all of the payments be made for the outstanding ACRES payments that are needed?

What is going on? We cannot understand what is going on. To say there is a computer glitch is okay for a day or two but to use the problem of a computer glitch for months on end, while people are not getting paid, is not acceptable. I am hoping that the Minister will have some straight answers for us today. Farmers are left in limbo as they wait to find out whether they are getting an additional payment or a bill for their 2023 participation in the ACRES scheme. I do not think my time is up.

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