A second pay run is commencing this week in respect of balancing payments for farmers in the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES).
Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue said today (Thursday, June 27) that payments will issue to 4,404 ACRES Tranche 1 participants across both the ACRES General and ACRES Co-operation approaches.
“As participants received either an advance payment last November or an interim payment of €4,000 or €5,000 in February and March of this year, the €4.3 million in payments that I am announcing today are balancing payments.
“This brings payments made to date to ACRES participants to just over €233 million,” he said.
Balancing payments
The Minister added that ACRES balancing payments will continue to issue to participants on a fortnightly basis, until all participants are paid in respect of 2023 scheme year.
The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has published a series of information leaflets on its website to provide an overview of the way in which payments are calculated.
Following the issue of ACRES payments, the department said that each recipient will receive a letter detailing information about the scores that determined the level of their payment.
ACRES payments for 2023 commenced over the period December 2023 to January 2024, when €88.35 million was issued in advance payments to 19,719 ACRES General participants.
In recognition of the time required to fully process all payments, Minister McConalogue issued interim payments to all other participants in February and March 2024.
Payments of €4,000 were made to 6,917 ACRES General participants and €5,000 to 18,144 ACRES Co-Operation participants, totalling €119.56 million.
The total payments issued in June 2024 relate to 31,081 participants, and come to a value of €25.4 million.
The department said that those who have received interim payments will have the value of those interim payments deducted from the payments issuing in the coming days.
In relation to outstanding payments, the department said that many will continue to require engagement with farmers and/or advisors, and “every effort will be made to resolve these as soon as possible”.