The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) has confirmed to Agriland that over 9,000 farmers have to make repayments under the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES).
During last February and March, the department issued interim payments to farmers participating in the agri-environmental scheme, totalling €119.5 million.
These payments were issued to farmers who had not received an ACRES Advance payment by mid-February 2024.
The flat rate payment, ranging from €4,000-5,000, was made by the department to address concerns that delays in ACRES advance payments were causing cash flow difficulties on farms.
The department previously said that scheme participants were advised when the interim payments were being made, that if their total annual ACRES payment was subsequently calculated to be less than the interim payment, the overpayment would have to be repaid.
A total of 9,116 interim payment recipients, 1,747 ACRES General and 7,369 ACRES Co-operation (CP), have been identified, to date, as having received an overpayment.
DAFM said that the combined sum of these overpayments is €15.8 million.
The breakdown of the amount of overpayment in terms of the percentage of participants is as follows:
An overpayment of €100 or less is not being recouped by the department and letters seeking payment were not issued to those participants.
The value of repayments outstanding from the ACRES interim payments, as of February 13, is a total of €2.8 million by 1,613 farmers.
The department noted that some of those farmers may have already partially repaid the overpayment.
Of these, 899 farmers have requested that their outstanding overpayments are deducted only from their next ACRES payment(s).
A further 316 have requested that deductions are made from ACRES and other payments.
"Participants who were notified of overpayments could contact the department if they had any queries regarding the calculation of the overpayment," a DAFM spokesperson said.
As of February 12, DAFM said that the total number of active participants in ACRES stands at 54,288.
44,941 farmers entered the scheme in tranche 1 (26,649 in ACRES General and 18,292 are in ACRES CP).
Another 9,347 joined in tranche 2 (6,942 are in the general stream and 2,405 in CP).
"A total of 1,802 farmers have withdrawn from the scheme since its commencement on January 1, 2023.
"Of these, 1,438 farmers had entered the scheme in tranche 1, while the balance of 364 farmers had entered the scheme in tranche 2," the DAFM spokesperson said.