FARMERS ‘are just sick of ACRES’ with all its bureaucracy and complications, according to Conamara’s National IFA Hill Farming Chair, Cáilín Conneely.

Earlier this month, the Dept. of Agriculture held an ACRES Review meeting aimed at trying to remedy a whole series of issues that have arisen with the environmental scheme.

“At the minute, farmers are just sick of ACRES. It’s just generally accepted that it’s a mess. In the long-term, maybe that is the biggest risk here, in terms of future scheme participation. Farmers deserve better,” said Cáilín Conneely.

He said that the next meeting of the Review Group was scheduled for mid-January but in the meantime he urged any farmer with any outstanding issues relating to training, LESS [low emissions slurry spreading], soil sampling and rare breeds to get them sorted immediately.

According to IFA Rural Development Chair, John Curran, said that there was huge frustration among farmers with the scheme and added that IFA had put forward a series of practical solutions to issues that had arisen.

“With ACRES we need to simplify the whole process; improve lines of communication/transparency for farmers, and ultimately deliver more money into the farmers pocket,” he said.

‘We all know the limitations of operating within the Commission rule-book, but the DAFM [Dept. of Ag.] need to be innovative and make tangible changes in the short-term for the benefit of farmers and the environment. Doing nothing and expecting things to sort themselves out will not work at this stage.”

“IFA has offered a series of tangible and practical solutions around improved communications; transparency; scoring and NPIs [non-productive investments] etc for an improved agri-environmental scheme,” said John Curran.

He added that what IFA had heard at the meeting was that most of the delays for most of the 3,000 odd Tranche 1 applicants were because of IT issues on the Department’s side and had nothing to do with farmers at all.

Last week, Minister for Agriculture, Charlie McConalogue announced that more than 34,000 environmental actions had been approved under the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES).

Pictured: Minister for Agriculture, Charlie McConalogue