Tipp farm leader says ACRES payments already overdue and must go out “immediately”

Loughmore farmer and Deputy President of ICMSA, Eamon Carroll, has called on the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Marine to immediately issue the 2024 ACRES payment that is due to over 50,000 farmers and to finalise outstanding payments under the 2023 scheme with many farmers waiting unacceptably long periods for monies that were due that years and through no fault of their own.

"Under the Farmers Charter 2023-2027, the Minister committed to commence payment of 100% of ‘cleared’ ACRES cases by the end of November 2024. Farmers habitually plan their outgoing payments on the basis that such incoming payments are in their accounts on those due dates and any delay can cause very significant issues for farmers.

"In the context where 2023 was the first year of the scheme, farmers could understand some ‘teething’ difficulties with payments, but we are over a year in and given that the Department agreed to commence payments by the end of November under the Farmers Charter agreed last July, we find the delays being experienced now very difficult to understand and troublesome. The Minister made these very serious commitments and it’s up to him to make good on them," said Mr Carroll.

Mr Carroll said that ICMSA will be raising this issue at the Farmers Charter Monitoring Committee meeting later this week along with the issue of outstanding 2023 payments "and we’ll want assurances that all outstanding payments are being issued immediately," said Mr Carroll.