A Roscommon agriculture advisor is concerned farmers will miss out on a number of scheme payments due to looming deadlines.
Noel Feeney says despite the already extended deadlines of December 7th for the ACRES programme and December 9th for the organic scheme, the paperwork for farm consultants demands a lot of time.
The Croghan native believes it's simply not possible to get to every farmer in the space of a month and he's now been forced to close his office this week to follow up on applications and attend farms.
There's concern many farmers will miss out on a scheme as their consultants deal with applications for ACRES, OFS and fodder funding as well as farm compliance inspections.
The IFA have called for a further extension to the deadlines and speaking on the Joe Finnegan Show the president of the Irish Agri Consutlants Association stated advisors were working around the clock to help farmers.
''Advisors are working from early in the morning to late at night, Saturday and Sunday trying to facilitate as many of their clients as possible. And, you know, that's our aim to get to deal with as many clients as possible but unfortunately, we're not going to. The schemes are opening up again later on next year but of course that's of little consolation to people because that would mean that they'll be without a scheme payment, whether it be an organic payment, or whether it will be an ACRES payments next year''
