Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

When I came into this role ten weeks ago, I looked at the situation with ACRES. It is unacceptable that 2,800 of the farmers who signed up to a contract back in 2023 have still not had their applications processed and that there are problems with the system. In 2024, there were 14,500 farmers who had not had their advance payments issued. That was unacceptable.

I worked with the officials to look at the challenges in the system around the very complex nature of processing these new applications and getting the new system in place. It was an ambitious approach to move to a results-based environmental system but, ultimately, farmers are delivering for us in a significant way. They are delivering for our environment and they must be supported. That is why I put an extra focus on this. I sought extra staff to be allocated. I visited the unit in Johnstown Castle in Wexford to support the staff and officials there who were working in very difficult circumstances dealing with farmers who were frustrated, and rightly so.

I understand the frustration there. My determination has been to fix this for them as quickly as possible.

A total of €247.4 million has been paid to 42,631 participants, or 95% of all ACRES participants, in respect of their participation in the scheme in 2023. A further 2,302 farmers - although these figures are from last week's issue because that is now down to 1,800 farmers - who participated in 2023 have yet to receive their final payments because we did a payment run on the 2023 ones last week. We are in a space now where we are at 9,300 for the 2024 payments and we are making weekly payment runs. Since I took office almost ten weeks ago, we have reduced it by almost 40%.

I understand where farmers are at. It is a continuing priority for me that we continue to work and I hope to have the vast majority of farmers sorted by the end of May, with the most difficult cases ended by the end of June.

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