The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine DAFM), has announced that participants in Tranche 1 of the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) who have not yet received their advance payments will receive an interim payment.
The average amount being paid to those in the ACRES General approach is €4,000 and participants in the ACRES Co-operation Project approach are being paid an average of €5,000. In this first run, the overall amount being paid is valued at €113.617 million and will be paid to 23,709 ACRES participants. Most participants should have received their interim payment by the 28th of February, except for a small number of applications requiring further processing. This cohort were scheduled to receive their payments ten days after this date.
In regards to the timing of full ACRES payments, DAFM intends to continue processing ACRES Tranche 1 contracts so that full payments will be made to all eligible participants in June 2024. ACRES participants receiving interim payments will have received letters informing them that the ACRES payment will take into account the amount already paid to them in the interim payment and this payment will be calculated to be less than the amount of the interim payment.
According to DAFM, a combination of the large numbers involved, the complexity of the payment calculations and this being the first year of the ACRES Scheme has meant that the processing of advance payments is taking longer than envisaged. Despite this, advance payments to the value of €88.4 million have already been issued to 19,719 participants.
For more information on ACRES, click here.
