Lough Neagh Must Be Brought Into Public Ownership To Save It
Lough Neagh is Ireland’s largest freshwater lake. Covering an area of almost 400 square kilometers and containing an estimated 3,600bn litres of water, it supplies over 40% of all drinking water for the Six Counties.
Lough Neagh features prominently in Irish mythology, perhaps most notably with the legend of Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the creation of the Isle of Man. Other great myths surrounding Loch nEachach (the lake of Eochaidh) include the overflowing of a magical well caused by a forgetful old woman, not to mention the great palace of the Tuatha Dé Danann located somewhere beneath its waters.
According to ancient legend, Lough Neagh was created when the giant Fionn Mac Cumhaill tore a giant sod from the earth and threw it at another giant. The resulting hole in the ground became Lough Neagh and the sod, when it landed in the Irish Sea, became the Isle of Man.
The lough also has its place in recorded history. The Annals of Ulster record the presence of ‘the Danes’ (Vikings) over-wintering on Lough Neagh 1,200 years ago. It was from the Vikings that Oxford Island on the lough’s southern shore near Lurgan received its name: Ost-Fjord, the east inlet.
About one kilometre off-shore in the lough’s southwest corner, between the river mouths of the Bann and the Blackwater, lies Coney Island, once a stronghold of Clann Uí Néill – and reputed to be where the clann's treasures were stored and hidden. The island’s old anglicised names of Innish Dabhall or Enish Douel make sense to modern Gaeilgeóirí as they derive from Inis Dá Bhéal - two mouth island. The Tyrone and Derry shores of the lough are home to many pre-Christian and early Christian sites.
In later history, Wolfe Tone recorded in his diary how, just days before leaving for America in June 1795, he had spent two days with other senior United Irishmen and their families on the eastern shore of the lough at the Deerpark and on Ram's Island. His diary mentions that Russell, Simms, Neilson, McCracken and their families were in the company. No doubt, like many visitors to Ram’s Island, they viewed the remains of its ancient round tower, more than 1,000 years old.
Three years later, Antrim town became one of the battle sites of the 1798 Rising, with the United Irelanders led by Henry Joy McCracken and Jemmy Hope. On February 28th, 1800, Rodaí Mac Corlaí was executed on the remnants of ‘the bridge of Toome’ which had been badly damaged during the Rising two years earlier.
Not far from where Tone and his comrades visited lies another ancient spot, Laloo (Lá ‘le Lugh). The old graveyard at Laloo contains the final resting place of William Harbinson, one of the leaders of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, who died in a Belfast prison cell in September, 1867. Thousands followed his funeral from Belfast to Laloo.
The round tower on Ram’s island, which was visited by Wolfe Tone and other senior Irish republican leaders in 1795. Credit: Love Ballymena
Leaving myths and history aside, Lough Neagh and the woodlands, bogs, meadows and reed beds that surround it, provide a unique and diverse habitat for many species of native plants, insects, fish, mammals, waterfowl and other birds. This has been recognised by Lough Neagh being designated as a Ramsar Site.
The ‘Convention on Wetlands of International Importance especially as Waterfowl Habitat’, also known as the ‘Ramsar Convention’ or ‘Wetlands Convention’, was adopted in Ramsar, Iran, in February 1971 and came into force in December 1975. Today it serves as an international treaty for the identification, conservation and sustainable use of globally important wetlands.
The lough has also been designated as an Area of Special Scientific Interest and a Special Protected Area. Collectively, these designations confirm that Lough Neagh and its surrounds represent a unique and important habitat that supports a unique and important ecosystem.
Lough Neagh is at the heart of a unique and important ecosystem that includes plants, insects, fish, mammals, waterfowl and other birds. Credit: Six Mile Images
Yet, those who live beside, work on and visit Lough Neagh are now rightly questioning the value of such lofty designations. They do because those in authority are allowing Lough Neagh to die.
Ten years ago, a 2013 study by researchers at Queen’s University Belfast found that the number of diving ducks spending winter months on the lough had dropped from 100,000 to fewer than 21,000 in a decade. The birds - the tufted duck, goldeneye, pochard and scaup - are the only types of diving duck that visit Lough Neagh in winter.
The study also highlighted a 66% fall in certain insect and snail species inhabiting the lough bed. Even the vast, and often irritating to humans, swarms of midges that are collectively known as the Lough Neagh Fly are disappearing. A key component of the lough’s eco-system, they provides all-year-round food for fish, eels and birds.
Lough Neagh’s famous eels which have provided regular seasonal incomes for generations of fishermen and their families are also becoming rarer. The decline in elvers – baby eels - first became evident in the 1980’s. If the eels disappear, so too will the fishermen and the way of life that depend upon them.
Lough Neagh is currently home to Europe’s largest wild eel fishery. The eels and the way of human life that they support is now under threat. Credit: Visit Armagh.
For years, the water in Lough Neagh has been classed as ‘hypereutrophic’, which means it contains excessive nutrients, particularly phosphorus and nitrogen. These excessive nutrients have accelerated the growth of oxygen-hungry algae in the loch. This in turn has caused oxygen levels in the water to drop below the minimum level which many aquatic species need to survive.
Human activities are largely responsible for the excess ‘nutrients’, with fertiliser and slurry run-off from agricultural land in the catchment area of Lough Neagh being one of the main offenders.
Alarmingly, over 200,000 tonnes of raw sewage are also dumped into the lough each year. The same lough from which more than 750,000 people receive their drinking water.
Pollutants from industrial and manufacturing activity in Antrim, on the north-eastern shore and Portadown/Craigavon/Lurgan on the southern shore also make their way into Lough Neagh.
This summer has witnessed large areas of the lough being affected by cyanobacteria, a particularly dangerous algae that is believed to have already killed dogs, birds, foxes and other animals. Anglers have been advised to not eat fish caught in the lake and swimmers have been banned from many areas.
Aerial view of the algae bloom which is now covering much of Lough Neagh
The illegal extraction of sand from the bed of Lough Neagh has further damaged the delicate ecosystem of the loch. This practice, which has been ongoing for decades without legal consequence, sees an estimated 1.7m tonnes of sand taken from the loch bed each year.
That extraction process has come under renewed scrutiny following a lengthy investigation by The Detail Network. Those investigations revealed that:
Sand dredging has caused severe scars of up to 56 feet (17 metres) deep on the lough bed
Fish do no return to areas that have been dredged for many years
Quarrying and sand dredging firms received millions of pounds in tax relief as part of a government scheme which is being investigated by the Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera)
Dredging at Lough Neagh has only been regulated since early 2021, after planning controls were introduced by then Infrastructure Minister at Stormont
No Stormont department or agency carries out regular surveys of the bed of Lough Neagh to measure the impact of dredging
Sand extraction on Lough Neagh is done by hoovering up the lough bed and any living creature that happens to be on it or in it
The devastation that has been wrought on Lough Neagh has been facilitated by the absence of a single owner or controlling body for the loch, the rivers, the lands that surround it and the rivers that feed it — a state of affairs that can be traced back to the Plantation of Ulster in the 1660s.
It was in this period that Britain’s King Charles ll ‘bestowed’ fishing rights and ownership of the lough to the first Viscount Masserene. Almost 400 years later, the ‘ownership rights’ to the lough reside with the 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, Nicholas Ashley-Cooper, who lives in Dorset in Britain.
These ‘ownership rights’ ensure that Ashely-Cooper receives a royalty payment for every ton of sand that is extracted from the lough bed. And a British legal power known as Crown Immunity allows for Lough Neagh to serve as both a sewage outfall and a reservoir for drinking water.
Nicholas Ashely-Cooper, the 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, who claims ownership of Ireland’s largest lake
About two dozen individual organisations – spanning government departments, councils and charities – have varying degrees of responsibility for Lough Neagh’s management. But these entities are fragmented and compartmentalised, with the result that no single agency or body exercises over-arching control over the lough, the lands that surround it and the rivers that feed it.
The obvious solution to the current state of chaos is to bring Lough Neagh, including the lough bed, waters and shoreline into public ownership. And to establish a new public body to oversee the sustainable, long-term, management of the lough. Critically this new public body must be granted sufficient legal powers to end the pollution and habitat destruction that has defined Lough Neagh for decades.
For too long, both partitionist states have been only too willing to permit the exploitation of the public’s natural resources for private gain — to the detriment of the natural environment and communities across the entire island.
It’s now time for effective, proactive and meaningful change. There is no other alternative. Lough Neagh must be brough into public ownership to save it.