Debate contribution: Lough Neagh

Debate contribution by Mr Matthew O'Toole on 9 September 2025.

MLA

Mr Matthew O'Toole

Party at the time

Social Democratic and Labour Party

Date

9 September 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Lough Neagh

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5086646

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move

We are here for a very short time, both on this earth, obviously, and in elected politics. Our time in politics — whoever we are — is brief, but Lough Neagh has been around since time immemorial. We have, therefore, been given the profound responsibility of being the custodians of our most precious natural resource. In this jurisdiction, our most precious natural resource — the source of 40% of our drinking water, Ireland's largest lake, the UK's largest lake, one of Western Europe's largest lakes and a treasure — is Lough Neagh, and it is dying. That is not hyperbole, and it is not exaggeration. It is an observable fact. This summer, we saw the return of blue-green algae, a cyanobacteria that has blossomed all over the lough. There are multiple reasons for the blue-green algae, including the presence of zebra mussels, which clarify the water; the intensification of heat due to climate change; and a failure to invest in our waste water infrastructure, which means that we are, effectively, pouring hundreds of thousand of tons of effluent into the lough and other waterways. The single biggest driver, however, of the pollution and degradation of our greatest natural resource is environmental run-off. In saying those words, I have to be absolutely clear that I am not attacking farmers or our agricultural sector, which is also precious and something that we treasure and rely on for our food security, our prosperity and our rural communities. Our farmers are a treasure, they are precious and our party takes their protection seriously, but we have to be honest about the specific driver of pollution in Lough Neagh. The majority of it is being driven by agricultural run-off, with the other additions that I have mentioned. Before the summer, a motion was brought to the Assembly to abandon something called the nutrients action programme (NAP). The nutrients action programme is core to, and is possibly the most fundamental part of, the Lough Neagh action plan. That plan is designed for the long term because restoring our greatest natural resource, Lough Neagh, and undoing some of the damage that has been done to it over generations, will take a long time. It is about starting to restore that precious natural resource over which we have custodianship. It is understandable that farmers and those in that sector have questions about how the programme is applied. It is their livelihoods and their communities that will be affected, and they need to be consulted. They were being consulted, but a motion was brought to the Assembly to abandon the consultation before the Minister who is responsible for the environment had even completed it. The programme is clearly the single most important action in the Lough Neagh action plan. All the parties in the Executive, bar the Alliance Party, the Minister's party, supported the motion. I am often accused in the Chamber of scoring points and being political. I do both those things because that is my job. It is also my job to try to find solutions and to be constructive and to offer people a way forward from bad decisions. The decision to support the abandonment of the nutrients action programme while saying that we support the restoration of Lough Neagh was a grave error. Often, when we make errors in politics here, we have to wait years or decades for the error of those ways to be shown. We did not in this instance; we had to wait weeks — weeks — to see the algae bloom at Lough Neagh again. It is like a scene from sci-fi. Earlier, Mr Bradley, a Member for East Derry, mentioned the green water flowing — I think that he was talking about the lower Bann — up towards the north coast. It is happening before our eyes now. It will take years, if not decades, to fix. If we reverse at the very first hurdle and the very first moment of starting to deal with the nutrient overload, which is the major, predominant driver of the degradation of Lough Neagh, what good are we? What good would we be as an official Opposition if we did not take that responsibility seriously? It is important that we talk about accountability. I welcome the fact that the First Minister is here. As a constituency MLA, she has engaged consistently on and talked about the subject. I want her and her party to provide leadership, because the First Minister has said consistently that she wants to deal with the pollution at Lough Neagh and to restore the lough to full health. I welcome those words; I have always welcomed those words and intentions. However, we have a problem with our politics here in the North, which is the junction between words and the actions that follow. You cannot promise to deal with Lough Neagh and the crisis that we have there, which is the degradation of the source of 40% of our drinking water and one of Western Europe's largest lakes, and then, at the very first opportunity, vote to abandon the necessary action. Politics is about leadership. It is about standing up, occasionally making difficult decisions and communicating trade-offs. It is about saying to people that, in order to achieve something, which is the protection of that lake, we need to take this step. In saying that, it is also the case that we need to bring people with us. The Lough Neagh action plan, which we would like to have gone further in other areas, was clear that education, support and innovation will also be necessary. I welcome the fact that the Minister is here today. I want to hear from the Minister about what else is being done to support our agri-food businesses and our farmers in making that journey. This may not be his responsibility, which is why I would also like to hear from the Executive about what the Minister for Infrastructure and the Executive more broadly are doing about the crisis in Northern Ireland Water, because that is also a significant, but not the main, driver of the crisis in Lough Neagh. We simply are not investing enough in our waste water infrastructure. When I repeatedly ask the now Finance Minister, who was an Infrastructure Minister, what the plan is to invest in NI Water, he brushes me off. He talks about water charges. I do not want water charges — that is not our policy — but I want something. I want some form of investment. If that involves borrowing, by all means, let us hear it. Let us hear the plan. I have not heard the plan. The only thing that we have heard so far is words, and then, at the very first opportunity, people walk away from the core part of the Lough Neagh action plan. If we believe in politics at all and in the words that we use when we stand for election, and if the statements that we put out on social media have any meaning at all, parties in the Chamber who say that they want to restore Lough Neagh and that put out social media posts last night saying that they are working to restore Lough Neagh should vote for the motion today, because we saw the consequences over the summer of not dealing with these actions. We are going to see blue-green algae blooms in Lough Neagh, and we have seen them already in other watercourses. I hope that we do not start to see them sprout in greater numbers in Belfast lough and in other watercourses on this island, but we could. We need to start this work now. We need to take it seriously, and we need to be honest with everyone about the journey that we need to take together.

There are a couple of things there. First, it is never an argument to say that a problem has been going on for a century. So many of the things that we debate — violence against women and low economic productivity — have been going on for a long time, but that is not an argument not to do anything about them. That is absurd, with respect. Secondly, it is not about individual farmers, who support their communities and work to feed their families, but there is agricultural run-off. A lot of that is to do with intensification and big agri-food business. That is why, among the proposals in our paper, which was launched by our party leader Claire Hanna a couple of weeks ago, is our call for a levy on the profits of big agricultural producers who have been responsible for some of that intensification and pollution. The SDLP is often told in the Chamber that we are not willing to come forward with proposals. There is a proposal. We have other proposals. We call for more North/South cooperation. We call for an independent environmental protection agency, and I hope that we are going to get clarity on that. We call for a well-being of future generations Act, as they have in Wales, to bind the Executive to an obligation on environmental protection and sustainability. We have not yet seen any of those actions from the Executive. The Member's party serves in and jointly runs that Executive, so he has some culpability and responsibility too. I mentioned waste water in my remarks. Yes, we should invest in waste water. I am sure that the Member, with his colleague the deputy First Minister, is making the arguments for investment in waste water and pressing for a plan, because that is part of the story. However, the overall story is that, before the summer, something happened that should not have happened: parties in this Chamber who said that they were going to protect Lough Neagh, the most precious resource on this island, at the very first opportunity, backed away and walked away from the action necessary to deal with it. I do not pretend that these things are easy. Nothing that is worth doing is easy: that is true. It is not easy to deal with these things. We have to be honest with people that we have been putting too much agricultural pollution into Lough Neagh. It is not easy to make the choice to invest more in NI Water. However, if we are serious about rescuing our greatest natural resource, we need to be serious and straight with the public. We cannot constantly say one thing and do another, or, worse, say one thing, do nothing and allow our most precious natural resource to fall further and further into decline. I urge the Assembly to back our motion.

1,791 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:05 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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