Over €15m in ACRES payments will be clawed back from almost 8,700 farmers, the Department of Agriculture has confirmed.
The Department is seeking to recover around €1,700 on average from affected farmers, a Farmers’ Charter meeting was told.
The meeting also heard that 1,620 farmers have withdrawn from the troubled environmental scheme. Close to 41,000 ACRES farmers had received payments of €246m by the end of September.
This is an average of €6,000 per farmer. A further 4,000 farmers are still waiting for payment.
The farm organisations have called on the Department to halt all efforts to recoup ACRES monies until the final payments to farmers who are subject to clawbacks have been agreed.
Meanwhile, the Agricultural Consultants Association (ACA) has expressed serious misgivings around the accuracy of ACRES payments relative to the scoring and inclusion of plots for their farmer clients.
Darren Carty is Sheep & Schemes Editor with the Irish Farmers Journal and says the majority of the farmers affected are along the Western Seaboard.
He has been giving more details to Midwest Radio’s Michael D. McAndrew.
