Debate contribution: Independent Environmental Protection Agency

Debate contribution by Lord Elliott on 13 May 2024.

MLA: Lord Elliott
Party at the time: Ulster Unionist Party
Date: 13 May 2024
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Opposition Business
Heading: Independent Environmental Protection Agency
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 4489214

Text

To be fair, I welcome the motion, which has come from those on the Opposition Benches. I have no difficulty with the Opposition's tabling it. The previous Member to speak had a go at the Ulster Unionist Party, but I will not do the same to the SDLP or any other party, because I want to do what is right for Northern Ireland. I note and accept the principle about Lough Neagh, which is part of the Opposition motion, but blue-green algae is in a lot of other areas, not just Lough Neagh. We have it in Lough Erne in County Fermanagh. It is widespread in England and Scotland. I noticed that Waterways Ireland warned about it some time ago in areas of the Republic of Ireland. The Republic has an independent Environmental Protection Agency, but it has not been able to stop the algae. England has the Environment Agency, which is a non-departmental public body sponsored by DEFRA. I do not know whether you can call that independent, but that is what they have in England. I am not so sure, therefore, that every region has an independent environmental protection agency. By the way, I have no major difficulty with such an agency. Mr McGlone suggested that we had changed our position. Nowhere have we said that we have changed our position. What we do not want, however, is a plethora of agencies and organisations that oversee the environment, because we will end up with a situation where, as with Lough Neagh and Lough Erne, nobody knows where the responsibilities lie. That is the difficulty that we have. What do you do? Do you just add another agency to the environment aspect of the Department, and, all of a sudden, the Minister is lumped with another agency that his Department or the Executive have to pay for? The real problem is that one will blame the other. What I want to see is a proper review. That does not have to take ages; it could be done quite quickly. I am sure that the Minister and others know exactly what they want to do. We have the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, which has a couple of separate organisations. We have shared environmental health services, which, I accept, are council bodies, but they still have oversight of environmental issues. We have the Office for Environmental Protection. We will probably have a climate change commissioner soon. We have councils and environmental health overseeing some of it. We also have Waterways Ireland and the Public Health Agency. All I ask is that we have a proper, organised and structured review ASAP so that we can see which agencies we may not need and how we can change the powers or responsibilities. If an independent environmental protection agency is required and that is the right way to go, let us do it. However, that will not stop the blue-green algae. It will take a lot more than an independent environmental protection agency to stop that process. That is a much wider issue than just putting in place an independent environmental protection agency or, indeed, getting Lough Neagh moved from private ownership to government ownership. Lough Erne, for example, is probably publicly owned — there is no private ownership of it — but nobody can accept who has responsibility for it. Waterways Ireland is there. Rivers Agency has some responsibility. The council, I assume, has some responsibility, and perhaps even NI Water does too. I am sure that DAERA has some responsibility. We need to be exact about who has responsibility for what, otherwise people and organisations will blame each other, no matter which element they represent. I would like to see an overall structure. Waterways Ireland, for example, has no responsibility whatsoever for Lough Neagh. Why is that? At the time of whatever deal was made, Lough Neagh was not put within Waterways Ireland's structure. Is there anything to stop us — I do not know the answer to this — giving overall responsibility to Waterways Ireland? I do not know. A huge number of questions need to be resolved. It is not as simple as some Members have outlined in that, if you put an independent environmental protection agency in place, you will get the lough under public control again and all will be rosy in the garden. I can tell you that it will not be. It will take a lot more than that to make this better. I note the figures that have been mooted: 62% of the phosphorus entering Northern Ireland's water environment comes from agriculture, 24% comes from waste water treatment works and 12% comes from septic tanks. Those figures have been mentioned on a number of occasions here and in other places. I am sure that the Minister will want to raise that issue.
Those figures appear to come from a 2020 Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) report that deals specifically with phosphorus. A quotation from that report reads:
"There is an important gap in knowledge as to the current state of P[hosphorus] within UK agriculture, the wider food system, and the natural environment."
That says that there is a huge knowledge gap, but, as far as I can see, the report gives no indication of the methodology — I apologise if it does, and somebody can put me right, if that is the case — used to reach those figures. Are they estimates? Was there some sort of methodology that is not in that report? I cannot see it. How did those figures come about? Obviously, people will question them. I question them. I am not saying that they are wrong; I merely want to know how they came about. In fairness, that situation applies in wider Northern Ireland waterways, as I understand, and not just in Lough Neagh, but there are a huge number of questions without answers in that respect.
Northern Ireland already has environmental governance in place. A complex, overlapping structure of organisations has responsibility for our environment, such as the Northern Ireland Environment Agency, the Office for Environmental Protection and, as was mentioned, Shared Environmental Services. Indeed, we might soon have a climate change commissioner. The Northern Ireland Environment Agency has established five key priorities: working towards a fully compliant regulated industry; delivering freshwater environment at "good" status; tackling waste sector crime; supporting good habitat, earth science and landscape quality and enhancing species abundance and diversity; and the promotion of environmentally sustainable development, infrastructure and access to quality green and blue spaces. Can anybody argue against any of those? I certainly cannot, and I commend the agency for having those principles and priorities. I assume that the difficulty is that, maybe, they are not all being implemented. I am not sure. However, those priorities, to me, factor in what we want in Northern Ireland. Will an independent environment agency do exactly the same thing? It may, but that is why I ask for an immediate review, so that the Minister, his Department and the Executive do not pay for a plethora of organisations and agencies on top of what we already have but with nobody, ultimately, taking responsibility. I will leave it there. I commend the amendment.

1,205 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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