The Minister made a point to Deputy Connolly about farmers making applications and splitting parcels of land. If a parcel is more than 50% peatland, can a farmer split it and section it off at application stage? Is that what the Minister said? Is that part of a solution he is offering? Will there be an appeals process such that if a person feels their land parcel is unduly designated, they can appeal the decision? Will the Minister provide clarity on that matter?

Sentiment score: 0.12

Will the Minister clarify that the parcels can be split on applications?

Sentiment score: 0.00

27. Deputy Martin Kenny asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the number of farmers still awaiting payment for ACRES for 2023 and 2024; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13629/25]

Sentiment score: 0.03

I raise an issue the Minister has heard about many times, as did his predecessor. I refer to ACRES. Many thousands of farmers across the country are still awaiting payment for 2023 and 2024. I ask for an update on where we are at in this regard. We have been told that the reason for the delays is to do with problems with processing and IT. The difficulty, as the Minister knows, is that a farmer who walks into the co-operative to buy a bag of meal and then says he or she cannot pay for it because of an IT issue will not be given much of a hearing. Farmers need to get their money.

Sentiment score: -0.10

I thank the Minister, and I appreciate that progress has been made. It has not been an entirely bad news story but it came from such a poor start. Farmers went out and expected that this scheme was going to be - it was sold as this - very similar to the old REPS that we had years ago. It was to be simple and easy to manage, it would be easy to meet the requirements and they would get paid promptly. That has not been the case and many farmers feel very disillusioned. In some cases, they feel they were sold a pup. They kept up their side of the bargain, yet they find they cannot get their money. The scoring mechanism that was put in place and the delays in getting those scores to work have posed a serious problem because many farmers have waited for a long time and they still do not know what score they are going to get. There is also the issue that, around the end of 2023, there was supposed to be a mechanism whereby they would have the non-productive investment, and if they put up gates or took certain measures on the farm, they could increase their scores. Many farmers still do not know what those measures can be, how they assist to get their scores up and how they can assist to get an improvement in the amount of money they are going to get out of the scheme. They still feel frustrated about all of that. While some are getting their payments, there is still an awful lot of work to be done. This is a point about all schemes that come from the Department of agriculture. There always seem to be problems and major issues with them, particularly around IT. This needs to get sorted out.

Sentiment score: -0.03

I appreciate that but at the same time, restoring their confidence is going to take an awful lot of work. We all know that because confidence in this scheme has been dented significantly. We are now in 2025 and this scheme started in 2023. I know there can be teething problems but they should not go on for this long. Many is the animal out there that has a full set of teeth grown and has gone to slaughter since this started. The Minister cannot just put it down to teething problems. There are serious and recurring difficulties in the Department of agriculture when new schemes are rolled out. Every time, there are issues. Farmers get delays, penalties and all kinds of issue like that, but we should not have those. The Minister cannot control the prices - we talked about this earlier - that farmers get for their produce. We understand that. He can help make the markets better and so on but he cannot control the prices. He cannot control the weather, which is a big issue for farmers. However, the one thing the Department of agriculture can control is the schemes it designs, and those schemes should be efficient and effective. They should pay farmers when farmers are owed money, and if everyone does what he or she is supposed to do, it should work smoothly and effectively, but it does not. It never has. I am not blaming the Minister. It has been the same under every other Minister for agriculture that I have seen. These schemes have never worked properly, and it would be a major job of work to change that and get them to work right.

Sentiment score: 0.11