Mayo farmer Declan Gillespie has had it with ACRES. He’s pulling out of the scheme.

The suckler farmer from Ballycastle contacted his planner and the ACRES office in Johnstown Castle last week, to tell them he was withdrawing.

The last straw was the letter he received from the Department of Agriculture seeking the return of the vast bulk of the interim payment of €5,000 he received earlier this year.

“This ACRES application has my heart broken,” Gillespie maintained.

“I was told I could get up to €7,311 in the scheme on my own land and commonage. But I got a breakdown there where I owe the ACRES people €3,425 and then my farm planner is €1,050. So out of the whole lot [of the interim payment] I have €575,” he explained.

“This scheme was not designed for the small farmer like me that has 10 cows and 10 calves. It was designed for the planners and for the fella who has 70 or 80 head of cattle,” the Mayo farmer claimed.

Gillespie is angry over the way ACRES was sold to farmers, the manner in which it was framed, the way it has been managed, and the lack of consultation or feedback to applicants.

“The scheme was advertised on false pretences. I went into this with 180ac of commonage and 30ac of green land. But the green land should not have been put in because there are two ring forts on it. The application is all up in the air now, it’s a complete mess,” Gillespie explained.

While the commonage was scored last May, he has not received an explanation why the lands scored so low, despite having rung the ACRES section “at least four or five times”.

He eventually got through to the Department of Agriculture, but at that stage he had decided to exit the scheme.

“I sent an email to ACRES and asked them to take me out of it. Now I’m setting up a payment plan with the Department, where I pay them €1,000 a year for the next five years,” Gillespie said.

He maintained that he will have to “ride the loss of the income” that he had hoped to get from ACRES. But claimed getting out now was better than investing thousands of euro on ACRES actions, when there was no guarantee that he’d get a return from that work.

“As I said earlier, this is not a scheme for small farmers like me. It’s a scheme for big farmers and planners,” he added.