Thousands of farmers continue to wait on money due to them under the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES).

Some 6,700 farmers are owed an advance payment for 2024 and another 1,492 are awaiting their balancing payment in respect of 2023.

In the most recent update from the Department of Agriculture, advance payments in respect of participation in the scheme in 2024 were made on Friday 25 April to 930 farmers, with those payments amounting to €3,688,406.82.

Meanwhile, payments for 2023 were made on the same day to 335 farmers.

However, the Department has said that payments will continue to be made weekly.

A dairy farmer in Tipperary who is farming in partnership with his father has received no payment since the scheme started in 2023.

The Tipperary duo are owed over €8,000 in total from the Department for participation in the scheme in 2023 and 2024.

'Nothing happening'

"There's nothing happening in terms of getting paid and we've got no correspondence from the Department either.

"Our problem was that they messed up our interim payment, they gave us €8,000 - two payments of €4,000 - when we should have only got €4,000 and that was all clawed back.

"Then, in the middle of all that, they said that we didn't meet our scorecard criteria.

"My adviser had to get on to them to clarify that the scorecard doesn't come into our involvement in the scheme because we don't have any low input pastures or native species of grass or anything like that.

"We're owed two payments of €4,023 for 2023 and 2024 - so €8,046 in total. However, my Teagasc adviser said that we will be one of the last to be paid, because apparently the farm partnerships were where they messed up the most. It's just annoying, it'd put you off going into other schemes," he said.

The father and son team carried out three measures under the scheme, which involved protecting a ringfort, planting a hedge which was done in year one and sow cover crops after 38ac of corn every winter.

Tax implications

He also aired concerns about the likely chance of receiving three payments this year and, from a tax perspective, how this would affect his farm business.

"I reckon by the time we get this payment we'll be owed €12,000 and that has tax implications, because all the money is coming in the one year - a good year at that. There could be half of that lost to tax in one year," he said.