A LEADING anti-fracking campaigner from Fermanagh was one of the speakers at an Extinction Rebellion demonstration held outside the Department of Infrastructure in Belfast last week.

Diane Little spoke at the event last Thursday, August 26, as Extinction Rebellion called for Northern Ireland (NI) to ban petroleum licensing.

The group claims the Climate Change Bill, which is due to be discussed in the Assembly in September, does not stop investment in harmful new fossil fuel infrastructure projects in Northern Ireland.

Speaking at the event, Diane told the crowd that the community in Fermanagh had been fighting for the past 10 years to "defend our health, our clean air and water and all we value from the oil and gas industry".

"The time for arguments is over. The UN's IPCC Report [ the recently published working group's special report on the impacts of global warming] is irrefutable and provides overwhelming evidence that we must force the NI Executive to act immediately.

"The IPCC scientific report surpasses the Hatch research on oil and gas plans for NI, but still, the Department of Economy is hiding the Hatch report even though it was funded with £63,000 of public money," she claimed.

She called on the NI Executive to implement a ban on petroleum licensing immediately, and continued: "MLAs must do the right thing and ban petroleum licensing. Fracking bans alone will still allow for the oil and gas industry to [be] establish[ed], still; allow for them to explore and to extract using similar processes under different names, and are easily challenged in courts.

"We, the people in NI, must take back the democratic process, make it work and keep it away from the greed of the oil and gas industry lobbyists and their influence and control. We must have a policy and law that bans petroleum licencing.

"We know what it feels like to have our community health, homes, clean air and water under threat from toxic industrialisation by the oil and gas industry.

"We cannot stand by and allow NI to start a new oil and gas industry, because we know what it that will increase methane emissions that will threaten the freshwater, and harvests, of other communities.

"It will put them at risk of fire and floods, homelessness, displacement, death and disease. Because that is what climate change means.

"Real communities, and real suffering – from deals done with fossil fuel lobbyists inside government buildings like these all over the world.

"We must take action to make the NI Executive listen before it’s too late for our community and other vulnerable communities like ours who will suffer permanent, irreversible damage.

"All that is needed is the continued failure of the NI Executive to listen and act. That is what will allow quiet conversations and operations in these buildings to continue and then the oil and gas industries become unstoppable."

After her speech, Diane tried to submit a list of demands to the Department of Infrastructure, and the Department for the Economy, but was unable to as the shutters in both buildings had been pulled down before the demonstration.

The demands included the release of the Hatch research report on the impacts of onshore petroleum exploration to the public.