Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister, and I appreciate that progress has been made. It has not been an entirely bad news story but it came from such a poor start. Farmers went out and expected that this scheme was going to be - it was sold as this - very similar to the old REPS that we had years ago. It was to be simple and easy to manage, it would be easy to meet the requirements and they would get paid promptly. That has not been the case and many farmers feel very disillusioned. In some cases, they feel they were sold a pup. They kept up their side of the bargain, yet they find they cannot get their money.

The scoring mechanism that was put in place and the delays in getting those scores to work have posed a serious problem because many farmers have waited for a long time and they still do not know what score they are going to get. There is also the issue that, around the end of 2023, there was supposed to be a mechanism whereby they would have the non-productive investment, and if they put up gates or took certain measures on the farm, they could increase their scores. Many farmers still do not know what those measures can be, how they assist to get their scores up and how they can assist to get an improvement in the amount of money they are going to get out of the scheme. They still feel frustrated about all of that.

While some are getting their payments, there is still an awful lot of work to be done. This is a point about all schemes that come from the Department of agriculture. There always seem to be problems and major issues with them, particularly around IT. This needs to get sorted out.

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