The future of an agri-environment scheme such as ACRES in the next CAP is uncertain, director general of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) Damian McDonald has said.

McDonald said due to potential CAP budget cuts and the funding needed for Ireland’s Nature Restoration Plan, an agri-environment scheme could lose out.

“The question will be with the Nature Restoration Law coming at us to be implemented, that has to be funded, and a lot of what you do in ACRES you could call nature restoration.

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“So the next time out, whether we’ll have any environmental scheme at all will be in question. I would not be sure of it by any stretch of the imagination.

“If you look at the level of cuts that have been proposed to the CAP the next time out at EU level, that’s before you go into national funding to top it [an environment scheme] up.

“There’s going to be a significant funding crisis for the CAP unless you have a big change of heart by the Commission in the next 18 months,” he said.

‘Own goal’

Speaking at a Clare IFA meeting in Kilfenora last week, specifically held as an AGM for the Burren branches, McDonald added that looking at it from a political perspective, the Government has mostly received bad press on ACRES despite the money spent on the scheme.

“The big issue the next time out is, will there be money for an ACRES scheme, because the total allocation for ACRES over the lifetime of the CAP Strategic Plan for five years is €1.5bn. That’s made up of EU money and Irish money; the Irish money actually comes from the carbon tax.

“It’s a total own goal by the Government that they spent that much money on a scheme and to hear really nothing only complaints. It doesn’t make sense, there’s no logic in that whatsoever, and some of the politicians are copping onto that as well,” he stated.

Burren lost out

On the topic of ACRES, McDonald acknowledged the impact the scheme has had on the Burren. The introduction of ACRES saw the winding up of the Burren Programme, a bespoke environment scheme tailormade for the area. In the previous CAP, Burren farmers could participate in GLAS (ACRES’ predecessor) and the Burren Programme.

“The ACRES scheme, I know it is a very sensitive subject in Clare, because effectively it was based on some of the best bits of your Burren Programme to rollout a national scheme. [They] tried to fit every local scheme into one national scheme. It was a very bad outcome for farmers in the Burren who had a scheme that was not just the apple of the eye for Ireland, it was the apple of the eye all over Europe. That has been a retrograde step,” McDonald said.