Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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27. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the number of farmers still awaiting payment for ACRES for 2023 and 2024; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13629/25]

Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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I raise an issue the Minister has heard about many times, as did his predecessor. I refer to ACRES. Many thousands of farmers across the country are still awaiting payment for 2023 and 2024. I ask for an update on where we are at in this regard. We have been told that the reason for the delays is to do with problems with processing and IT. The difficulty, as the Minister knows, is that a farmer who walks into the co-operative to buy a bag of meal and then says he or she cannot pay for it because of an IT issue will not be given much of a hearing. Farmers need to get their money.

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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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.

Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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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.

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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There is no doubt that, when a new agri-environmental scheme commences at the start of a CAP process, it brings a lot of teething problems. I remember that GLAS in 2015 struggled in that first year. It is a big undertaking. We had a number of different measures coming together at this one time.

Let me be clear. While I am pointing to the momentum I have managed to build in this process in the ten weeks I have been in my role, I will not rest until every farmer is sorted. I want to see that happen. We are on track to make the balancing payments that are due to be paid in May. I am going to make sure that they are done as well and that the vast majority of farmers outstanding will have their issues resolved and payments made by the end of May, with the most difficult cases to be fixed by the end of June.

The solutions I am looking to put into place are permanent ones whereby these problems for farmers will not recur. The IT functionality is built around these solutions so that they are not one-off interventions. I want to restore farmers' confidence in ACRES.

Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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I appreciate that but at the same time, restoring their confidence is going to take an awful lot of work. We all know that because confidence in this scheme has been dented significantly. We are now in 2025 and this scheme started in 2023. I know there can be teething problems but they should not go on for this long. Many is the animal out there that has a full set of teeth grown and has gone to slaughter since this started. The Minister cannot just put it down to teething problems. There are serious and recurring difficulties in the Department of agriculture when new schemes are rolled out. Every time, there are issues. Farmers get delays, penalties and all kinds of issue like that, but we should not have those.

The Minister cannot control the prices - we talked about this earlier - that farmers get for their produce. We understand that. He can help make the markets better and so on but he cannot control the prices. He cannot control the weather, which is a big issue for farmers. However, the one thing the Department of agriculture can control is the schemes it designs, and those schemes should be efficient and effective. They should pay farmers when farmers are owed money, and if everyone does what he or she is supposed to do, it should work smoothly and effectively, but it does not. It never has. I am not blaming the Minister. It has been the same under every other Minister for agriculture that I have seen. These schemes have never worked properly, and it would be a major job of work to change that and get them to work right.

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy is articulating the frustration that is felt by many farmers across the country. The points he raised are not ones I am hearing for the first time. We will have the Presidency of the EU in the second half of 2026, and in my determination as Minister, right at the time of the AGRIFISH Council when the other 26 ministers for agriculture are all looking to agree the new CAP, Ireland will have significant influence in those negotiations.

At the heart of the new CAP that I want to see developed is simplification. I know it has been talked about a lot in the past, but it has not been delivered. We are quite constrained by the costs incurred-income forgone model, which is an impediment. That is not what REPS was. I was in REPS; I remember how great it was. It was on a whole-farm basis. The costs incurred-income forgone model restricts how we can design schemes, in that we cannot pay farmers unless there is additional conditionality. That has meant, in terms of the beef, sheep and agri-environmental schemes, that there is conditionality if we are to get money to farmers. That is a significant impediment. It is something I would love to revisit as part of CAP reform.

On the basic point about ACRES, we will get there, and I want to see ACRES farmers paid, able to commit fully to the scheme and see it developed strongly into the future.