Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Seanadóir as an gceist seo. I thank Senator Boyhan for raising this matter which I am taking on behalf of the Minister for agriculture, Deputy McConalogue.

Just this morning we announced a new environment scheme for breeding waders, €25 million from my Department via the National Parks and Wildlife Service and €5 million from the Department of agriculture. That is hugely important. As Senator Boyhan said, farmers and landowners want to participate in these schemes and that is why they have been hugely popular and there is such a big uptake on them. That is a great testament to the success of the schemes.

In line with the commitment in the programme for Government, a flagship environmental scheme, namely, ACRES, was launched last year. The scheme has funding of more than €1.5 billion over its five-year lifetime, to facilitate the participation of 50,000 farmers. As I indicated, there was exceptional demand for entry into the scheme, which demonstrates the interest of farmers to take actions to address climate, biodiversity, environmental and water quality issues.

The financial allocation in Ireland's Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, strategic plan, CSP, for ACRES facilitates the participation of 50,000 farmers, with intake phased over two tranches. While it had initially been planned to accept 30,000 under the first tranche, it was decided, in view of the level of interest, to accept all valid applications into the scheme which, in turn, means that some 4,000 will be taken into the second tranche.

The decision to accept all 46,000 applicants has put significant pressure on the ability to pay all participants in 2023. Officials have been working to expedite payments, but with the unprecedented numbers, it has not been possible to get all ACRES applicants paid by the year end. Payments will commence on 18 December with two thirds of all ACRES general participants in the final stages of being processed for payment in the initial payment run. Due to the additional complexity associated with the co-operation project, CP, stream, payments for participants in this stream are being progressed and will begin to issue in February 2024. Everything is being done to pay, as soon as possible, all ACRES applicants who clear prepayment checks.As part of budget 2024, the Government has committed €200 million to ACRES, which is a substantial increase on the 2023 budget. This Government wants to reward farmers for environmental ambition and pay them in accordance with the environmental results achieved. This is more challenging in the co-operation project areas. That is why additional non-productive investments and landscape actions are available as mechanisms for farmers to improve their lands, increase their scores and hence increase their payments. It is a results-based payment scheme.

The structure of ACRES is at the forefront of agri-environmental schemes throughout Europe. The achievements we have made to date in scaling a results-based approach up to a national level, building on the success of the European innovation partnership, EIP, initiative, and which farmers have found to be extremely effective and rewarding, must be acknowledged. The qualitative aspects of the scheme and the focus on the right action in the right measure in the right place demonstrates the way in which agri-environment schemes have evolved over the years, with a more holistic approach being taken by looking at the landscape as a whole and designing an ambitious scheme and actions that can contribute to addressing a range of challenges. Many of these were based on the Burren Life programme which was hugely successful. A significant achievement of ACRES to date is that now 25% of all land under agricultural management is scored. This output will provide a valuable resource across Government, demonstrating the multiple objectives and co-benefits of the scheme. We as a Government acknowledge the intensive and focused effort from all concerned, first and most importantly, from farmers but also their advisers, co-operation project teams and the Department officials who are working together on this first year of this new scheme. We further acknowledge that farmers were expecting payment before the end of the year and we note that the collective decision and hard work to include all eligible applicants into tranche 1 of ACRES has put significant pressure on delivering all payments by year end. Every effort is being made to maximise the number of applicants who will be paid in the period before Christmas and every effort will also be made to ensure that payments to co-operation project participants are processed as quickly as possible in early 2024.