ACRES scheme has been "a disaster from the start" - Leitrim IFA's Rural Development committee rep

There are still 101 farmers Leitrim still waiting on the ACREs scheme payment, it was revealed this week. 

Speaking to the Leitrim Observer, Gerry McGarry of Leitrim's IFA's Rural Development committee said that the issue has continued for too long and something needs to be done about it.

He said: "It should be possible that this should be able to be sorted out in a short space of time. They went past the first year and we were told it would be sorted out the next year; some of it was but a lot wasn't and we are now gone into the third year. Farmers may be asset rich but we're cash poor and that money needs to come for farming families to survive and keep the bills paid.

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"It has been a disaster from the start. We have constantly been promised that they were going to clear the payments by several dates; the final date I got was last June and they were all to be paid by then." 

He said that while the number of unpaid farmers has reduced, the fact that there are 100 farmers yet to be paid is unacceptable. "These are 100 farmers who have invested a lot of money and time and their money has not come through and that is money that they signed up for and the government promised them and they have reneged on it."

Mr McGarry said that in his view, the department need to come out and say specifically what the issues are. "Some of it seems to be farm transfers and farm ownership and a lot of it then seems to be if a farmer had an inspection, no matter how the inspection went, the payment was delayed and there was no information coming back; it was very very frustrating. My concern is that there are around two years left in this scheme for most farmers and coming towards the end, there will be a new scheme planned and we need proof that the next scheme is going to be fit for purpose because we cannot continue with this again. It's not fair; everyone gets their wages at the end of the week or month and farmers are used to waiting for payments for months but this really takes the biscuit; it's ridiculous."

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He added: "We all understand that there can be issues and problems when a new scheme comes in but this really has gone on too long; almost three years now. And I think farmers have been very patient. We have lobbied, met politicians, the IFA president has met the minister and again there were promises made that this was going to be sorted out and obviously, with 100 farmers left, it's not. "

There are over 250 people in the entire Shannonside region awaiting payment, with 23 of these payments outstanding since 2023.

Mr McGarry concluded: "It happened one year that there was an upfront payment made to farmers and that was a stop gap but the minister refused to do it the following the year. Everyone knows that if a farmer gets too much money, it's taken back from his payments later that year; the department is never going to be out money if they make an upfront payment and there is no reason that they can't do that for these farmers."