2024 ACRES payments cases 'down below 10,000' - Heydon
The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Martin Heydon, has said his department is "making real progress" in relation to cases that are about 2024 Agri Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) payments.
Minister Heydon told the Seanad that "we were at 14,500 or thereabouts two months ago, but we are down below 10,000 now".
The minister told senators yesterday (Thursday, March 20): "I want to give one reassurance to people as we are making progress. I gave a very clear commitment in the Dáil and I give the same commitment here in the upper house that it is my intention to have the vast majority of these cases resolved, cleared and paid by the end of May, with the most difficult and problematic ones to be cleared by the end of June.
"That is a commitment I am sticking to. I review those figures every week. I am keeping a very close eye on it and publishing these figures very regularly as well."
He also told senators that in relation to ACRES one of the issues is "about addressing the interventions we undertake in instances where we identify a problem with a particular application".
Minister Heydon said: "Some of these problems are on the farmers' side, including issues around probate and title. I would say more than half of them are on my department's side, where we have to make interventions.
"When we identify a problem, we could intervene with a pen and paper and make a manual intervention or we could design a bit of IT functionality that fixes the problem once and for all.
"If we go in with the pen and paper, we will be going in like that every year. I do not want that. I do not want these situations reoccurring next year."
Instead the minister said he wants "to ensure the fix to the problems we have encountered will be a one-off requirement".
"It is a very new scheme and a big change," he added.
