Debate contribution: Lough Neagh

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Carroll on 9 September 2025.

MLA

Mr Gerry Carroll

Party at the time

People Before Profit Alliance

Date

9 September 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Lough Neagh

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5086778

Read the official Assembly record

Text

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Lough Neagh is one of our most precious natural resources and wildlife sites. It is the source of 40% of the North's drinking water. It is supposed to be protected under local, European and international law, but, in reality, Lough Neagh is a public health hazard and a toxic death zone for local wildlife. Despite the safeguarding of Lough Neagh being a key priority in the Programme for Government, the Executive's empty promises simply are not cutting it. Executive approval was finally secured for a Lough Neagh action plan last summer. Of the plan's 37 points, 23 have not yet been implemented. There are snails' paces, and then there is this. It is no surprise that the parties that continue to subsidise billionaire polluter corporations are not acting in the interests of the lough. More recently, as has been mentioned, the Minister developed proposals for a new nutrients action programme, which is aimed at tackling pollution in Lough Neagh. That was a bit of positive action: it did not go far enough in the direction in which we need to go, but it would have made some difference to the lough. For other parties in the Chamber — Sinn Féin, the DUP and the UUP — those modest proposals were too radical. They have fallen in line behind the Ulster Farmers' Union, which, certainly in this case, is dead set on maintaining business as usual and defending big corporate polluters rather than on representing the interests of most farmers. Agricultural pollution is just one cause of the crisis at Lough Neagh, which is multifaceted. Another of the causes is sand dredging, which scars the bed of the lough. Each year, 1·5 million tons of sand are suction-dredged from the lough. It takes the ecosystem decades to recover from that. The lough bed is supposed to be a protected nature reserve for plants, fish and diving birds, but, instead, the Executive allow it to be plundered. Fishermen and fisherwomen have been sounding the alarm about sand dredging and the harm that it does to fish nurseries in an already fragile lough. In 2020, the then SDLP Infrastructure Minister supported sand dredging. The SDLP has still not walked back from its support for that. Saving Lough Neagh is not an impossible task. The solutions to the crisis are clear and always have been. It should not take decades to save it, and we do not have decades in which to save it. The solutions have been identified by the Save Lough Neagh campaign, Friends of the Earth and many of the communities from around the lough shore. The state of the lough is a permanent physical reminder of our urgent need for an independent environmental protection agency.

The Executive are remarkably poor at protecting our environment, and the NIEA has not done the job for Lough Neagh. It is clear that it has failed to regulate pollution and protect wildlife and communities. As Friends of the Earth put it:

"We have the crime scene, but no police to hold the criminals to account."

What an apt description of what has been happening in the past couple of years. Without an independent EPA to fine and punish guilty factory farms and agri-food polluters, nutrients and agricultural run-off will continue to flow into the lough and kill it.

In the past decade, the Shaftesbury estate of Lough Neagh made over £245,000 in profit from sand dredging. That is pocket change for an English aristocrat such as Lord Shaftesbury, but the fact that an absentee colonial landlord is profiting from the destruction of our lough is absolutely outrageous. He needs to hand back the lough to the people here, and he should not be paid a penny for it. It is our lough; it is not his family's lough. If he does not hand it back, the state needs to step in and requisition it into public ownership with community management. A proper crackdown on industrial farming, factory farming and intensive agriculture is long overdue. More than 62% of the phosphorus that causes toxic algal blooms comes from agricultural sources. Part of that demand means properly funding NI Water, which would, of course, transform the lough and people's lives. However, the Executive and, in many cases, the Opposition, see the local ecosystem as something to exploit, not protect. As the most basic bare minimum, the Minister and his Executive colleagues need to get behind efforts to clear up this mess ASAP rather than supporting lobbyists for the rich and powerful corporate polluters. Maybe then the Executive could finally put planet before profit.

771 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Jev’s structured answers

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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