What the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES)

ACRES is Ireland's new Agri-environment climate scheme under Ireland's CAP Strategic Plan. This new €1.5 billion flagship Agri-environment scheme is a farmer-friendly scheme to help address biodiversity decline while delivering an income support for up to 50,000 farm families in Ireland.

The intake into the Scheme will be phased, with at least two tranches.

Tranche 1 of ACRES opened for applications on 17 October 2022 so advisors may submit applications, on behalf of their farmer clients, until 23.59 on 7 December 2022. If approved, the ACRES contracts are to start from 1 January 2023.

As was the case with GLAS, all active farmers may apply for ACRES.

 

The scheme has two approaches, ACRES General and ACRES Co-operation

• General: available nationally (outside of the high priority geographical area defined for the ACRES Co-operation approach) and offers a range of actions for individual farmers, both targeted and general.

• Co-operation: available to farmers in defined high priority geographical areas, and involves results-based payments as well as bespoke farm and landscape actions. Contracts have been awarded for the management of Co-operation Projects (CP), and farmers will be supported by new teams, who will develop local action plans for their zones.

 

To be eligible to participate, an applicant must:

• Be aged 18 years or over on date of submission of the application.

• Be the holder of an active business identity. Herd ‘owner’ status is required. 'Herd Keeper' is not acceptable.

• Have all lands farmed declared in the applicant’s name on the Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS).

• Have submitted a valid BPS 2021 application.

• All lands brought into the scheme must be declared in the applicant’s 2022 BPS and declared on the applicant’s Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) scheme application for all subsequent years of participation.

If you are participating in other environmental schemes, you may apply for ACRES, but if approved you may have payments adjusted in either scheme to ensure no double funding takes place.

Please contact us if you have any doubts about compatibility of any scheme.

 

Rates of payment

• ACRES General offers a maximum of €7,311 a year. The level of payment a farmer may achieve will be determined by the payment rates for the actions selected and undertaken satisfactorily.

• Co-operation offers a maximum of €10,500 a year with a maximum results-based payment of €7,000 with an extra non-productive investment and landscape maximum of €3,500. The level of payment will be determined by results-based scorecards, non-productive investments, and landscape actions, which will be designed for land-types and region.

You must engage an approved ACRES Advisor to make an application on your behalf.