The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine pledged today (Thursday, June 12) that the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is going to get every farmer in the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) "paid as soon as possible".

Speaking to Agriland from Expo 2025 in Osaka today (Thursday, June 12) Minister Martin Heydon - who is leading an agri-food trade mission to Japan this week - said that there are currently "far less than the 14,500 farmers that were unpaid" in relation to ACRES, when he became minister in January.

But the minister added: "One farmer unpaid is one too many".

He added: " I set very ambitious target for my officials in department to have the these cases cleared by the end of June.

"There's a very considerable local farmers in that group and in the cohort around land use and issues around ownership of land and change of ownership which has impacted on a number of the different cases here."

He said in relation to the issues that have impacted on ACRES his "solution and focus" on dealing with the different groups has centred around "developing the IT functionality to address these issues".

"I don't want farmers to have to go through this again.

"I have been really determined we deal with it on a systematic basis - we've got our structures right, we've built a momentum when I came into this role we weren't doing weekly payments. There was a significant backlog there - we've put extra staff resources in there I supported the officials who have great strides in recent months to make the progress there and we are going to get every farmer paid as soon as possible," Minister Heydon added.

He also told Agriland that he is "hopeful that next week's figures will see significant movement in this space as well as we move through those cohorts".

Additional reporting by Stella Meehan