Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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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.

Erin McGreehan (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy has another two minutes, or four minutes in total.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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That is okay. We probably need four hours or four months on ACRES. Throughout last year, the processing of 3,000 outstanding cases for the 2023 payments was moving very slowly. After the general election was called, the then Minister insisted that ACRES payments were on track for a late November payment. On 5 September, it was suggested on the website of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine that 95% of farmers could expect to be paid their ACRES balancing payments by the end of September. That did not happen. Those payments were set aside. A payment run was done for tranche 1, comprising those who joined in 2023. Just 60% of those received a payment for 2024. We can add to the mix around 9,000 farmers who joined tranche 2 of ACRES in 2024, one third of whom have yet to be paid.

The other problem is that if you have a query in relation to your file, you cannot ring the ACRES section. Instead, you have to email that section. This is usually replied to with a generic email which states that the Department is processing payments and will be in touch in due course. This is not good enough. Unlike other schemes like the basic income support for sustainability, BISS, scheme and the areas of natural constraint, ANC, scheme, farm advisers do not have access to ACRES payments. They do not have this with ACRES. They have no access to payments or issues relating to files. Why is this the case? This has to be changed immediately. They must have access to what is going on.

I need to know today that all outstanding payments for 2023 and 2024 will be made immediately because these funds are badly needed for each farm household. The Department upholds a very rigid set of deadlines that farmers have to adhere to or penalties will issue. However, there is no issue with the Department missing deadline after deadline when it comes to the processing and payment of ACRES payments.

The Department needs to be more proactive in contacting farmers. There always seems to be a technical issue on the other side. The farmer and the adviser are left in limbo wondering if it is something on their side, but more often than not it is not something on their side; it is something to do with this famous glitch. We have to sort out what this glitch is. This is landing on his table now because farmers' confidence in ACRES is absolutely on the floor as we speak.

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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I thank Deputy Conway-Walsh for raising a really important issue. I thank her for her good wishes at the start. This is a topic that is a real bugbear for farmers. If they are caught in this, the frustration is palpable. I will go through the detail on this in a minute. Before I do so, I want to respond to the Deputy's point about the frustration with the overall scheme, especially the frustrations of those who have got caught up in the complexity of the system. I understand the significant challenges for those who have not got that clarity or do not have the full payment in that space. If farmers have not had clear communication, that too is frustrating. Farmers are a resilient bunch. We can deal with anything as business people if we know what we are dealing with, if we know the timelines and if we know the impediments. That communication has got to be very clear. We must clearly communicate where the impediment is. In some instances, the impact is on the farmers' side. There are issues around probate or different elements around title. We will work with them on that. What I am looking to do at the minute is get a full detailed brief on exactly how many farmers are in that space and how many are in the space where the issue is on the Department's side. Where the impediment is on our side, if extra resources are needed I am very clear that they will be found and we will do everything we can - we will move might and main - to get this addressed as quickly as possible.

As the House is aware, ACRES is the flagship agri-environment and climate measure under Ireland's CAP strategic plan 2023-27, with €1.5 billion allocated to the scheme over its duration. The design of the scheme was informed by lessons learned through the green low-carbon agri-environment scheme, GLAS, the results-based environment-agri pilot project, REAP, and experience gained in locally led projects undertaken under the European innovation partnerships. ACRES has been a big change in our approach to agri-environmental schemes. It was and is a very ambitious scheme. It involves scaling up the results-based approach to national level. The level of payment is determined by the score assigned to the land. The higher the quality of the habitat, the higher the resulting payment. There are two approaches within the scheme. As the Deputy will be aware, an ACRES co-operation approach is available in eight zones which have high nature value and an ACRES general approach is available nationally outside those eight zones. In response to the high level of interest in participating in ACRES, it was decided that all valid applications for the scheme would be accepted, the outcome of which is that there are now 54,300 farmers in ACRES. The roll-out of the scheme from October 2022 and the commencement of contracts from January 2023 necessitated the development of an extensive new IT functionality and the upskilling of advisers in relation to the assessment and scoring of lands.

The scheme is also linked to several IT systems within my Department. For example, claims for payment under ACRES are submitted through BISS, while scores from the assessment of lands are submitted on the Department’s generic land management system. The development of these platforms had to coincide with the roll-out of the scheme. There is significant work involved in the verification of claims and in the calculation and issuing of payments to more than 54,000 participants. Most of these applications consist of a number of actions, or there may be a number of different habitats to be assessed, and multiple scorecards to be completed and submitted.

Payments have been finalised to 94% of ACRES tranche 1 participants in respect of their participation in the scheme in 2023, to a total value of €247.1 million. Balancing payments in respect of 2023 remain to be made to approximately 2,700 farmers. Certain issues such as transfer of contracts, alignment with BISS and issues with scorecards have contributed to delay in making some of those payments. Work is ongoing to resolve these issues and every effort is being made to process outstanding payments as quickly as possible.

It is important to point out that interim payments of €4,000 and €5,000, amounting to almost €120 million, were paid in February and March 2024 to 25,000 ACRES participants who had not at that point received an advance payment for their participation in 2023. I can touch on this further in my supplementary response.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister is aware that issues - I refer to probate or other matters - are normally sorted out by the planner, or by the farmer having access to talk to somebody in the Department who can explain why this parcel received a certain designation, or what is happening in relation to it.

When one cannot talk to anybody, though, it cannot be sorted out, and therein lies the problem. Untold damage is being done in the relationship between the Government and the Department and farmers and in bringing farmers on board in terms of climate change, biodiversity and everything we need to do. That is why this is so urgent, never mind the fact that we are in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis.

All of these farmers in Mayo who are in ACRES will also have had sheds damaged, fodder damage and lines down. I have an email from somebody trying to get hold of Eir to get CCTV calving cameras systems sorted and so on. There is major hardship for farmers at this time of year between the cost of living, not having enough payments and not knowing when they are going to get paid. This has to be sorted out. Is the Minister putting in place a grant to replace sheds for people who have had severe damage? It would be important for restoring confidence and faith, and farmers would know what to expect, if the grant was at least put in place fairly quickly.

I am aware of the fishing sector and the damage done to the fishing industry. I cannot converse with the Minister here today without raising that with him also.

I ask the Minister to please get ACRES sorted and tell me when all of these farmers will be paid their full entitlement, which is what they were promised and they signed up to. Otherwise, there will be other schemes that farmers will just completely turn their backs on.

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy has raised a number of different issues. I have been over in the west of Ireland meeting a number of farmers affected by the storm. Many of the farmers we are discussing in terms of ACRES have been impacted by the storm in a range of ways. We stand ready to support them. Initially, we are getting their power and water back but I am conscious that this debate was about ACRES and I want to give clarity on the record in that regard.

The year 2023 was a challenging for this brand-new system, which was ambitious and had a level of complexity that previous agri-environmental schemes did not. We have to manage those complexities and challenges, and we made €4,000 and €5,000 interim payments, amounting to almost €120 million, to farmers last year to make up for that fact. The vast majority of farmers did get a payment in that space. We are now working through the final calculation for the 2,700 farmers who are outstanding as to exactly what amount they are due. For those who require a top-up payment, that will be pursued. We are dealing with processing of those balancing payments now on a case-by-case basis. These are some of the more complex issues.

Regarding the Deputy's point about issues around probate and title deeds, talking to an official in the Department of agriculture can sort that out. I agree that we need clear communication. Farmers require that. The very officials who are working through these detailed and complex cases are the same ones who spend all of that time on the phone as well. Where there is a probate or title deed issue, it is dealt with by the Land Registry, not the Department of agriculture. We must clearly communicate so that, where there is a title deed issue, farmers know what steps they can take. I will make a commitment: if a large number of them are impacted in a similar way, I will use my office to talk to the Land Registry and others to see how we can move their cases along.

Ultimately, I take on board the frustration of farmers impacted by this. The year 2024 saw a significant improvement in processing through the issues and getting on top of those that were highlighted in 2023. Some 75% of ACRES advance payments were made in 2024, which is a reflection of the fact that progress has been made in the delivery of the required IT systems. There is more to be done and I will continue to work on that. It is a major priority for me to resolve this issue for the very reason the Deputy outlined, namely, achieving the confidence that is needed in this agri-environmental scheme, which so many farmers wanted to sign up for. I am proud of the fact that we were able to facilitate all of those farmers being able to access it. Now we want to ensure that those who have outstanding payments or issues are dealt with as quickly as possible.