Opinion

Toxic algae are once again turning Lough Neagh green. The response is as stagnant as the water

With each shrug of the shoulders in London, and limited progress in Belfast, north-south engagement on the lough’s future becomes more urgent

Algae in a bay on the shore of Lough Neagh at Loughview Road, Antrim, last week. Blue-green algae is "back with a vengeance", according to the Lough Neagh Partnership. Photograph: Stephen Davison/Pacemaker Press
Tommy Greene
Tue Jul 23 2024 - 06:00

“There are things people forget that were in the April 1969 manifesto of one crazy 21-year-old,” veteran civil rights campaigner Bernadette McAliskey (née Devlin, now 77) told an audience last month at Bellaghy, near the north-western shores of Lough Neagh. “But they did include Lough Neagh. They also included integrated education, cancelling the national debt and a number of other exciting things.”

It took more than 50 years for Northern Ireland’s big political parties to catch up with McAliskey, who on that 1969 ticket became Westminster’s youngest-ever MP. In the recent Westminster elections, pledges to safeguard “dying” Lough Neagh featured in almost every party manifesto in the North. In the previous general election, and many others before it, not one party had a single commitment dedicated to the lough’s health. All-island parties also lacked policy on Ireland’s largest inland water body, arguably its most important.

Over the last 12 months, something has shifted. Lough Neagh is no longer in the sidelines of the public mind, after its pollution – so widespread it could be viewed from space – became an international news item last year. When the North’s devolved powersharing executive was restored in February, ministers sought photo opportunities at the lough and spoke enthusiastically about how its condition was a “top priority” for them.

Events since then, however, have seen decision-makers circling back to more familiar territory. Algal blooms returned to the lough’s waters again this month, bringing with them the images of toxic green sludge and dead swans that plagued the vast water body last year. Before the bloom’s reappearance, more than 15 reports of blue-green algae had already surfaced at the lough during 2024.

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The algae’s return was framed by a series of missed deadlines and “broken promises”, as one member of the Northern Assembly and loughshore resident put it. Each misstep has induced weary groans of cynicism at what has appeared to be an all-too-familiar obstructionism and dysfunctionality at Stormont.

MLAs went into their summer recess without a co-ordinated strategy in place to kick-start the lough’s clean-up after the Democratic Unionist Party reportedly blocked a number of the plan’s proposals. Just two days before the Westminster election, agriculture and environment minister Andrew Muir announced a number of measures his department could begin to take forward in the absence of any other actions. In the last number of days, the executive agreed on the plan’s 17 outstanding measures. But there were some notable changes to and absences in the text: a proposal to restrict the use of chemical fertilisers became simply a pledge to “consult” on the same; it lacked ironclad commitments to upgrade the North’s sewerage network; nor was there any real mention of North-South collaboration to address the future of the lough’s cross-Border catchment area.

Commitments to “scope” and “consult” on a range of actions proliferate in the document. It promises a series of Stormont working groups and consultations – which have failed to yield tangible improvements in Lough Neagh’s management or health for decades – with much of the plan couched in a language of contingency and uncertainty. This is partly down to the fiscal pressures facing this executive – underlined by the £1.6 million sum allocated to Muir’s department earlier this year to tackle a wide range of issues threatening the lough’s ecology.

Keir Starmer’s administration seems so far to be as uninterested as the previous Westminster incumbents. It made bold promises on a number of contentious subjects – Casement Park and the Irish Sea border included – at a first Belfast visit. But nothing has yet been said of support for addressing the multiple problems besetting the largest freshwater body on these islands. With each shrug of the shoulders in London, and limited progress in Belfast, arguments for North-South engagement over the lough’s future become more compelling. Once the intense election cycle on the island is cleared after the upcoming Dáil vote, there will be real space for movement here.

Algae in the harbour at Ballyronan marina on the shore of Lough Neagh last week. Photograph: Stephen Davison

At a more localised level, efforts to instigate and advance what could be considered a “recovery” process have also been stymied. This has been highlighted by recent clashes between the Lough Neagh Partnership, a de facto management body tasked with developing previous work on community ownership proposals, and the community itself. Public trust in the area is unmistakably low.

Some recent changes of posture may prove to be significant, however. Nicholas Ashley-Cooper, the 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, has been forced into a U-turn of sorts over future ownership and management of the lough. Last year, he told the BBC he “want[ed] to be treated like any other business owner” and be paid a fee for handing over the inherited asset; now, he is suggesting he may offload it for free. The Dorset-based aristocrat, who visited Belfast last week, has been at the centre of renewed controversy over the lough.

For those who closest to the lough issue, it is hard to shake a sense of deja vu, as key stakeholders begin to go through the motions again. The lough needs transformational change – change that addresses food systems, creaking wastewater infrastructure, and long-running democratic deficits in its management. Taking the longer view of history, the lough has overwhelmingly been a connector – the “hub” to use writer Liam Campbell’s phrase, aligning the spokes of the region – rather than a source of division and stasis. It can be that again. But something will have to give for this to happen.

Politicians and the lough’s stakeholders are once again adopting a language of urgency regarding its future. If that is not matched by actions and scale of change that have failed to materialise in the past, it is difficult to see how they will finally manage to turn the page.

Tommy Greene is a journalist based in Belfast