Lagan Valley Greens

02/09/2026

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At this evening’s Environment Committee meeting, I once again argued for the reinstatement of pedestrian access to Holywood HRC.

Residents have contacted me on a number of occasions to request that pedestrian access be reinstated.

The Committee deferred decision.

At the Committee, I raised a number of points including:

• The pedestrian access was removed without consultation with local residents.
• Many people in Holywood do not have access to a car and rely on walking or other forms of transport.
• Residents living in nearby apartments and town centre housing should not be forced to use a vehicle to access the facility, particularly when they are within walking distance.
• The three-month trial used to justify the decision was, in my view, too short, insufficiently publicised, and therefore did not provide an accurate reflection of potential pedestrian use.

Access to public services should be fair and inclusive for everyone, regardless of whether they own a car.

Were you aware of the 3-month trial of pedestrian access? Do you feel people within walking distance should have to take a car to access the facility?

02/09/2026

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02/09/2026

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02/09/2026

🤖 💻 ❌

02/09/2026

The funniest part of this nonsense is calling Alliance centrists “left wing” 🤣🤣🤣

30/08/2026

This pollution is the responsibility of Lisburn & Castlereagh City Council. What are they doing about it? 🤷🏻‍♂️

19/08/2026

Mike Nesbitt did not resign over one bad day. Despite making solid progress on waiting lists, health reform, and tackling health inequalities, he resigned because his own party leader crossed him twice.

First, Burrows forced him to go back on his word to include trans young people in Northern Ireland in a clinical trial. Then Burrows announced to the public, before telling Nesbitt, that he opposed any relocation of emergency surgery from Causeway Hospital.

Nesbitt's resignation letter makes it clear. Northern Ireland's place in the Pathways trial was "the price" of securing Executive agreement to the puberty blocker ban. Burrows drew a red line over it anyway, and colleagues felt Nesbitt's U-turn was a betrayal. That is not our characterisation, it is his.

Jon Burrows is not a clinician. He is not an expert in gender healthcare, paediatric medicine, or hospital reconfiguration. He is a party leader who has decided his own opinions carry more weight than the evidence, and he has now forced a Health Minister out of office to prove it.

Mal O'Hara, GPNI Party Leader, said: "Jon Burrows has shown exactly what he thinks health policy is for: a tool to enforce his own ideology. Trans young people and Coleraine patients were both sacrificed to prove a point to his own party. Nesbitt's letter confirms it.

"Nearly ten years after the Bengoa report told Stormont how to fix this system, we are still watching political vanity override patient need. That is not leadership. That is a health service being run by a man who thinks his opinions are a substitute for expertise."

Trans young people are not a bargaining chip. Patients in Coleraine are not a bargaining chip. Key health decisions belong to clinicians and evidence, not to whichever politician currently holds the whip hand in the UUP. Northern Ireland deserves better than a health service dictated by one man's inexpert, ideological red lines.

17/08/2026

40 years in the River Lagan, and it took a Green Party petition and just three weeks to finally get something done about it. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Genuinely good to see people in NI being proactive when an issue is highlighted properly. Everyone is fed up with the endless hand-wringing and inaction, and this shows what happens when a community actually pushes.

But a petition shouldn’t be the mechanism that gets a river cleaned up. That’s the job of the agencies who are supposed to be doing this already, and this car is one small, visible example of a much bigger problem.

Only 29% of our rivers and 24% of our lakes meet good ecological standards, and most of those failures don’t have a campaign behind them to force action.

Cllr Anthony Flynn, who first raised the issue, said: “We raised this because it summed up a much bigger issue with how pollution gets dealt with here. It’s great the car is finally moving, but nobody should have to run a petition to get basic action on a river.”

Richard Gill, Lagan Valley Greens Co-chair, added: “This should never have needed a petition. We’re glad it’s finally moving, but let’s be honest about what it took to get here: three weeks of public pressure after forty years of nothing. If that’s what it takes to shift one car, imagine how many smaller problems are sitting untouched right now with no campaign behind them.”

That’s why the Green Party keeps making the case for a genuinely independent Environmental Protection Agency, with the power and the funding to act on pollution and dumping before it takes years of neglect and a public campaign to shift it.

Still a partial removal, still more to do here on the Lagan, and we’ll keep the pressure on. But the real fix isn’t one car pulled out of one river. It’s making sure no other community has to fight this hard just to get basic environmental accountability. 🌱

27/12/2025

The ecological crisis at Lough Neagh is hitting hard: toxic blue-green algae is back for another year, wildlife and fishing livelihoods are suffering, and Stormont has yet to act with the urgency the lough deserves. 

Join us on 9 January 2026 at Sonas Coop at 19:30 in Lisburn for a public discussion on the future of Lough Neagh. This meeting brings community voices, campaigners, and local people together to push for real solutions, not excuses.

Your voice matters. We need accountability, ambition and action for the UK’s largest freshwater lake before it’s too late.

Tap the link, save your spot and be part of the change.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lough-neagh-public-discussion-tickets-1978936672860

22/12/2025