Hundreds of people have taken part in a protest demanding urgent environmental action to protect Lough Neagh.
Former MP and civil rights campaigner Bernadette McAliskey addressed the event, which had received support from TV presenter and naturalist Chris Packham.
The lough, Ireland and the UK’s largest freshwater lake by surface area, has been blighted by noxious blooms of blue-green algae in recent summers.
The cause has been put down to an excess of nutrients from a number of sources, including waste water, septic tanks and agriculture, exacerbated by climate change and the invasive species zebra mussels.
Lough Neagh supplies 40 per cent of Northern Ireland’s drinking water and sustains a major eel fishing industry.
Stormont ministers have agreed an action plan to tackle the environmental crisis.
People take part in the rally at Ardboe High Cross in Co Tyrone on Sunday. Photograph: Liam McBurney/PA Wire
Sunday’s event started at the Battery Harbour in Co Tyrone and retraced the route of an anti-lignite mining protest in 1986 to Ardboe High Cross on the shores of the lough.
Delivering an address at the rally, McAliskey said: “All the people standing around here are going to be the beginning, not the end, the beginning of showing we don’t need to be told what the problems are and we are tired listening to how hard it is going to be to find a solution.
“We know what the problems are, we know what the solutions are, we know what the science is and none of this is going to be dealt with unless all the people around here gather up more of all the people around here and we’ll do it for ourselves.
“Nobody ever got anything, none of the ordinary people like us off the people sitting looking down their noses at us by believing they were going to do something on our behalf rather than use us for something on their own behalf.”
She added: “If we pledge to take care of it, be responsible for its restoration, collectively take over the stewardship and ownership in that sense, to guarantee the recovery of the lough and to guarantee the harmonious life of human beings and nature integrated in each other.
“That doesn’t mean we are going to have to leave our houses and live in huts of clay, it means we just have to change some of the things we do and recognise enough is enough for all of us.”
One of the signs at the demonstration. Photograph: Liam McBurney/PA Wire
Padraig Mac Niocaill, spokesman for the Save Lough Neagh campaign, told the rally: “Our water infrastructure remains extremely underfunded.
“NI Water is not able to treat the amount of sewage going into our water and the British government seems hell-bent on introducing water charges as an austerity measure.
“I really hope that everyone here today, the minute that Stormont says we have to pay the price for what corporations and greedy politicians have done to our lough, I hope you will march with us again against any attempt to bring water charges to our doorsteps.”
Giving his backing to the protest march, Packham said: “The destruction of Lough Neagh is a national scandal unfolding in plain sight.
“One of these islands’ most important freshwater ecosystems is being sacrificed because governments and regulators have failed to act with the urgency this crisis demands.
“Toxic algae, collapsing biodiversity and sewage pollution are not inevitable, they are the consequences of political choices.” – PA