The Department of Agriculture is advising farmers who are unhappy with the scores on their land in ACRES to contact the person or body who assessed their land.

This is in order to understand the way in which the score was arrived at, a Department spokesperson told the Irish Farmers Journal.

“A feature of ACRES is the inclusion of results-based actions where a participant is rewarded with a higher score, and, in turn, higher payment, based on the quality of environmental services provided.

“Privately-owned land, on which results-based actions are located, were scored by the participant’s ACRES adviser.

“Commonage was scored either by an ACRES co-operation team or, in the case of commonage outside the ACRES co-operation areas, by a team contracted by the Department to do such assessment and scoring.

“If a participant wishes to know the contact details of the team that scored the commonage parcel, they can contact the ACRES section with the details of the parcel in question and the Department will provide the relevant contact details.

“However, in most areas, farmers have already been in contact with the team that carried out scoring on the commonages,” the spokesperson said.