An Independent TD for Tipperary South has told the Dáil how an Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) farmer in his constituency has "received a payment of just €300 when he was due €5,000" in July.

Deputy Mattie McGrath claimed today (Thursday, July 3) that a "dodgy car salesman would do better than this".

Deputy McGrath also said that "the ongoing and completely unacceptable delays in the issuing of ACRES payments is a matter of deep concern to farmers across the country".

"Farmers who entered this scheme did so in good faith, on the understanding that they would be paid in a timely manner. Yet, here we are, halfway into 2025, and thousands of farmers are still waiting," he stated.

Deputy McGrath told the Dáil that the delays in issuing ACRES payments was "due to errors" on the side of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM).

"They expect to get the money as they have been compliant," he added.

The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Martin Heydon, told Deputy McGrath that it was "not acceptable" to him that some farmers in ACRES had been left unpaid.

"I will continue to push my officials and push the system as hard as possible to work through those last issues," he pledged.

Minister Heydon also pointed to the "progress" that DAFM has made in relation to ACRES payments.

He said when he started in the role of minister six months ago there were 14,500 farmers unpaid and in six months time that had been reduced to 1,586 farmers.

Minister Heydon added: "I have put extra resources in from a departmental perspective to get those farmers paid with the promise that these challenges would not recur.

"The resolutions we found to these problems took time because we did it in a systematic way and dealt with the cohorts group by group and designed the IT functionality around that, so that this problem would not recur every year and that we could restore confidence in this really exceptional scheme that has put more than €500 million into farmers' pockets."