Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)
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79. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine if he will provide a full explanation for the ongoing delays in issuing ACRES payments to participating farmers; the number of applicants still awaiting full or partial payment under all streams of the scheme; the urgent steps being taken by his Department to resolve system bottlenecks and ensure timely payment to farmers who have met all compliance requirements; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36922/25]

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)
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I want to ask the Minister about the ongoing delays in issuing ACRES payments. Farmers signed up to these schemes in good faith. There are delays in payment even in cases of full compliance. The issue is an inability to pay. I want answers as to what the Minister is doing about it. What is the reason for the delay? Is it merely that the Department does not have the funding to pay the farmers? This is totally unacceptable. I expect a good response from the Minister.

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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I hope the Deputy always expects a good answer, not just to one question. I thank him very much for raising the agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES. The scheme is very important. I accept that there are challenges in regard to it for some farmers.

ACRES is the flagship environmental scheme provided under the 2023-27 CAP strategic plan, with €1.5 billion in Exchequer and EU funding allocated over the course of the scheme. There are currently just under 54,000 participants in ACRES.

Payments in respect of ACRES continue to issue on a weekly basis, as cases pass all required validation checks. A total of €512.2 million has now issued since ACRES payments commenced at the end of 2023. That is more than half a billion euro in a couple of years paid directly to farmers to support them in the measures they are taking.

In the case of the 2023 scheme year, almost 99% of participants have been paid in full. As regards 2024, 97% of participants have received their advance payments and almost 94% of participants have now received a balancing payment.

My Department is committed to resolving as soon as possible the issues that have been delaying the remaining payments. Additional resources have been deployed and we are systematically working through the remaining issues associated with the outstanding cases. These issues can range from internal departmental matters, such as the processing of changes of ownership and the finalisation of payment calculation processes, to external, applicant- or adviser-related matters such as the submission of documentation.

While we continue to work on those internal issues, I take this opportunity to remind farmers who have further information to submit to do so as soon as possible. My Department will continue to issue regular online updates in the coming period on the progress being made. I am not happy that some farmers are not being paid on time and when they expected to be paid. It was a top priority for me to address this issue when I came into this office at the end of January. I will not rest until the situation has been resolved for every last farmer. We have made very significant progress in recent months to get the number down to the current very low level. It is a top priority for me and my officials to continue to work until the situation has been resolved.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)
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The Minister calls ACRES a flagship scheme. I wonder about that. The ongoing and completely unacceptable delays in the issuing of ACRES payments is a matter of deep concern to farmers across the country. It is just not fair. Farmers who entered this scheme did so in good faith, on the understanding that they would be paid in a timely manner. Yet, here we are, halfway into 2025, and thousands of farmers are still waiting. I must be the only person in the country meeting farmers who are unpaid in County Waterford, County Tipperary and other places. Farmers are even waiting for partial payments. Many have received nothing at all. This is not a technical glitch or a minor inconvenience; this is a serious cashflow crisis for farmers who have bills to pay and who have engaged contractors in good faith. They expect to get the money as they have been compliant.

Many of the delays are due to errors on the side of the Department. One example relates to a constituent who was due to receive his 2024 payment. He received a partial payment in November 2024, which was totally due to an error by the Department. He was told he would be provided with a corrective payment in 2025.

Now in July he has received a payment of just €300 when he was due €5,000. A dodgy car salesman would do better than this. The Minister said recently that due to staffing issues, the payments could not be paid. That would not be acceptable in any Department or for anybody else.

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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I did not say that.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)
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It is not good enough.

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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I did not say that. The Deputy should not attribute comments to me about staffing issues. I have been very clear here; we have had a very significant challenge with processing and working through all of these issues. Some farmers were not paid on time. When I came into this job on 23 January, 14,500 farmers who were due to be paid had not been paid because of challenges we had in processing their applications. That was not acceptable to me. It is still not acceptable to me that there is a couple of percent of farmers left unpaid. However, the progress we have made from 14,5000 farmers unpaid when I started this job less than six months ago to getting that down to 1,586 farmers, of whom 514 within that number are from 2023 so they are counted twice in that measure, is significant.

We have made very significant changes to our structures in Johnstown Castle. We have brought about a number of changes in how we process these. I have put extra resources in there from a departmental perspective to get those farmers paid with the promise that these challenges would not recur. The resolutions we found to these problems took time because we did it in a systematic way and dealt with the cohorts group by group and designed the IT functionality around that, so that this problem would not recur every year and that we could restore confidence in this really exceptional scheme that has put more than €500 million into farmers' pockets.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)
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I accept the Minister's bona fides. He is a farmer. I am a businessman. No one could operate in this manner, with farmers still waiting for payments from 2023 and hearing every excuse in the world. A man expected to get €5,000 of a corrective payment and he got €300. As I said, a dodgy salesman or a man at a fair who would spit in your hand would do better than that. In this day and age, this is shocking. I accept the Minister's bona fides but I want to know how many farmers are still waiting under each stream of ACRES and how many farmers are suffering through Department errors. This is not acceptable. What concrete steps is the Department taking? The Minister said he has made efforts but what kind of a lethargic or inept mindset got into the Department?

I respect the Department officials and have done for decades. I have met them and dealt with them. In this day and age, it is just not good enough to blame IT and blame anything he likes. Farmers entered into these schemes in good faith and where they are compliant and honour the terms of the scheme, they must be paid. They have contractors to pay. They have feed suppliers to pay. They have families to raise and kids to put into education. No other sector would put up this.

The Department issued a statement some months ago - I heard it myself - that there were delays with payments again and the new deadline would not be met due to lack of staff. If the Department officials were told they would not get paid next Thursday, or if that statement was made in any Department, that would not last for long. The farmers need fair play here. Fair play is fine play for me and it is not happening for the farmers of Ireland.

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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I believe we have made progress. I cannot be any clearer; I will not rest until every last farmer is paid. I will continue to push my officials and push the system as hard as possible to work through those last issues. The last issues are also the most difficult. To be at 99%, 97% and 94% of payments through the different cohorts is significant progress. We have made a commitment that problems will not recur on this scale.

The Deputy asked for a specific breakdown, so let us make it specific to Tipperary. In Tipperary, of the applicants in 2023, 1,559 have been fully paid and only 14 still have challenges we are working through. There 14 outstanding and 1,559 have been paid. In 2024, 1,842 received advance payments for 2024 and 1,797 received the balancing payments on that as well, with 63 of the advance payments not paid and 113 of the balancing payments not paid. Those farmers still have to be sorted. They are my focus and I continue to do that while making sure we can restore confidence in the sector. However, the vast majority of the Deputy's farmers in Tipperary and farmers in other parts of the country have had those problems resolved. They are finding great benefits and delivering benefits through ACRES, which has delivered more than €500 million into our economy and into farmers' pockets over the last couple of years.