Over 1,100 Longford farmers receive over €5.5 million in ACRES payments
Intensive work is continuing on the calculation of the full payments due to farmers under ACRES
A total of 1,189 farmers in Longford have received €5,511,915 in payments following the distribution of interim payments to remaining Tranche 1 applicants of the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES).
Longford / Westmeath Fianna Fáil TD Joe Flaherty said: “ACRES, which is a €1.5bn scheme, has attracted enormous interest from farmers across Longford and Westmeath. My party colleague, the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue, has worked to ensure that all farmers that wanted to participate were facilitated but the increased numbers combined with the complexity of the scheme unfortunately led to the processing of advance payments taking longer than envisaged.
"I know and appreciate just how important these payments are to farmers and I am glad that the Minister introduced an interim payment to those that didn’t get their advance last December. These interim payments were made last week.
“The amounts paid in the interim payments are €4,000 to those in the ACRES General approach and €5,000 to participants in the ACRES Co-operation Project approach. Combined with the advance payments made before Christmas, 1,189 farmers in Longford have now received over €5.5 million in ACRES payments."
Deputy Flaherty concluded: “I know that intensive work is continuing on the calculation of the full payments due to farmers under ACRES. When this work is completed, the ACRES payments, which will issue to farmers in June, will take into account the interim payments already made to the relevant participants. A letter is being issued this week to all those ACRES participants who are getting the interim payment to explain how the process will work.”