Some 83% of commonages scored under the Agri-Climate Rural Environment Scheme (ACRES) across the west are eligible for payments worth €60/ha to €220/ha.

Approximately 170,000ha of commonages were scored by the ACRES west Connacht co-operation project team in north-west Connacht and south Mayo-Connemara in 2023. The average score recorded across the west Connacht commonages was six, resulting in an average payment of €90/ha.

Any commonage parcel scoring between four and 10 will receive an ACRES payment, ranging from €60/ha for a score of four up to €220/ha for a score of 10.

If the commonage scores between zero and three, farmers receive a participation payment of €50/ha up to a maximum of 20ha on any commonages.

These results-based payments link the nature quality of the habitats on the commonage to the payment.

This is the first time that the habitat quality of all commonages in the west Connacht region was assessed to provide information on the environmental health of a large portion of the west of Ireland countryside.

Just under 35% of the land area was assessed as having good vegetation structure while the remainder was deemed to be sub-optimal, suggesting unfavourable stocking levels.

The project team aims to work with farmers so they can make informed decisions on the management of their lands.

“We look forward to promoting landscape actions to help farmers attain higher scores and associated payments by protecting and enhancing the biodiversity of our local farmed landscape,” the team said.

Farmer clinics

Over the course of September, the co-operation project team invited all commonage owners in the two areas to commonage clinics. These clinics were an opportunity for farmers to discuss the scores of the commonage with the co-operation project team and any other queries they had about the scheme.

Over 25 clinics were held over the course of the month, with advisers meeting with approximately 1,000 farmers.

The project team said that, overall, farmers were more positive about the scheme and the scoring of the commonages after seeing the amount of information that was collected to generate the score.

They discussed and gained an understanding of the scores and explored the issues identified and what they could do to improve their scores.

“In some areas, farmers have already joined forces and started to address some key issues to help improve scores for next year.

“Shareholders in a number of commonages around Mayo and Galway have come together to hire skips to clear dumping from commonages to help improve their score ahead of next season,” the team said.The team also advised farmers to cut down and remove any self-sown conifers and to rest any areas which have been overgrazed or damaged.