Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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2218. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to outline the plans he has to resource the Agricultural Appeals Review Board; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43298/25]

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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The Programme for Government; Our Shared Future (2020) included a commitment to establish an independent Agriculture Appeals Review Panel in legislation.

The Agriculture Appeals (Amendment) Act 2024 was passed by the Oireachtas and signed into law by the President in October 2024.

The 2024 Act provides for the establishment of an independent body, to be known as the ‘Agriculture Appeals Review Panel’. The functions of the Panel will be to conduct reviews of decisions of Agriculture Appeals Officers, a function that is currently carried out by the Director of Agriculture Appeals.

My Department is currently in the process of drafting Regulations which will set down procedures for the functioning of the Review Panel. Once the Regulations are finalised, the process of appointing a Chairperson and ordinary members of the Panel will commence.

I expect that the Panel will be in place by quarter four of 2025.

Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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2219. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to outline the plans there are to streamline the ACRES scheme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [43299/25]

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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At this point in time over 99% of participants have had their 2023 payments finalised. Almost 98% of participants have now received their 2024 advance payment which is worth 85% of the total payment for 2024. Finally over 95% have also received the remainder of their 2024 payments which issue in the balancing payments.

The issuing of payments has gathered considerable momentum this year as knowledge and experience of the scheme has improved and functionality has been deployed to address challenges that were encountered. I appreciate the patience that was shown by the participants as we resolved these challenges. I took the decision to instruct my officials to develop solutions to solve issues permanently rather an applying a quick fix. The benefit of this is that I expect these solutions will avoid the same issues presenting again.

The timeline of payments that is included in the weekly online update published on my Department's website demonstrates the progress that has been made in issuing payments. The issuing of payments are now in line with the timing of payments in the previous environmental scheme the Green Low-Carbon Agri-Environment Scheme or "GLAS".

However this does not mean that we cannot continue to learn. A review of the scheme is taking place as I want to pay participants more quickly. We are examining the payment process and investigating if we can make changes that would simplify the process and in turn speed up the issuing of payments.