ACRES review to take place in coming months
Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue has today (Wednesday, October 30) announced that a review of the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) will take place over the coming months.
The flagship agri-environmental scheme is a major part of Ireland's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Strategic Plan.
However, the €1.5 billion scheme has been the subject of repeated criticism from farm organisations due to delays with payments and scoring.
Minister McConalogue said that ACRES "represents a very significant step forward in the level of ambition that we want to achieve from an agri-environmental scheme".
He said that the scheme has "leveraged the experience" gained from European Innovation Partnership (EIP) projects and the Results-Based Environment-Agri Pilot Project (REAP).
The minister said that the area now covered by results-based actions has increased from 80,000ha to 1.2 million hectares, and the number of farmers implementing such actions has increased from 3,200 to 35,000.
"As the scheme approaches the end of its second year, it is timely to review the experience to date, to identify what has worked well, and to consider areas where lessons can be learned for the future.
"In an overall sense, ACRES is working well for most farmers, and more than €247 million in payments have issued to participants since its inception.
"However, I am aware, for example, that some farmers may have received lower scores, and therefore lower payments, than they might have expected.
"Without compromising on environmental ambition, I have asked my department to review the experience with the scheme to date, and to consider whether it can work better for these participants," McConalogue said.
Minister McConalogue said that through this review he wants to "assess the options and identify ways of advancing the scheme to improve" and in particular, the experience for those in ACRES Co-operation (CP) who have a low score.
"I have asked my department in that context to meet with farm organisations, FAS advisors and the CP teams to get their views, with a view to coming to a conclusion by the end of the year.
“This is a scheme with high environmental ambition. I secured record funding for it, and ensured that all 55,000 farmers who applied were accepted into the scheme. This is 10% more than was committed to," he said.
The minister recently committed to examining whether a way can be found to facilitate more farmers to join the scheme.
"When it became apparent to me that some participants would experience payment delays, I approved an unprecedented interim payment.
"This meant that all farmers in the scheme were paid either an advance or interim payment by the end of March," Minister McConalogue said.
"This review aims to assess how we can improve farmers’ experience of the scheme, ensure its environmental ambition is fully realised, and make sure that ACRES is working effectively for everyone," he added.
