Community supports save Exploris strategy

Community supports save Exploris strategy

2 October 2013

A PACKED public meeting in Portaferry has called for the Exploris aquarium to be designated as a regionally funded public service.

Over 90 people crowded into the Portaferry Hotel on Monday night to pledge their support for Northern Ireland’s only aquarium which is under threat of closure from Ards Council amid mounting concern about its annual running costs.

A council decision to close the aquarium has been deferred for two months and those attending the public meeting recognised that a lot of work has to be done over the coming weeks.

A new working group comprising trade union officials, politicians, local residents and the Friends of Exploris has been established with the aim of securing regional funding for the aquarium and retaining the facility as a national asset.

The aquarium’s importance to Portaferry and tourism in South Down and across the Ards peninsula was highlighted by a number of speakers on Monday night, with several calling on central government to come up with the cash to not only keep the doors of Exploris open, but to invest its long term future.

Monday’s meeting was organised by trade union NIPSA and came after a major backlash against the proposed closure of Exploris which employs 18 full-time staff, a number of whom were in the audience at the Portaferry hotel.

NIPSA deputy general secretary, Alison Millar, paid tribute to Exploris staff whom she said have “worked tremendously hard over the past number of years in extremely difficult circumstances.”

She said the trade union had helped secure a two-month deferral of the closure and admitted an enormous amount of work must be carried out in a very short time frame. Mrs. Millar said it’s essential that regional funding is secured for the aquarium.

The NIPSA official confirmed the trade union has written to a number of government departments at Stormont and to the Tourist Board and Environment Agency highlighting the importance of regional funding being used to safeguard the aquarium’s future in the long term.

“Regional funding is the road we must go down,” declared Mrs. Millar. “The people who work in Exploris know it needs a cash injection to make the aquarium the world class facility it should be.

“Lots has been made about the reduction in visitor numbers to Exploris but we are in an economic downturn and there are a variety of other reasons why numbers have ped. The money required to keep Exploris open and invest in its future is not a huge amount out of Northern Ireland’s block funding grant,” declared Mrs. Millar.

The NIPSA official, who along with some of her colleagues met Environment Minister Mark Durkan ahead of Monday night’s public meeting to discuss concerns around the future of Exploris, said he was “sympathetic” to the attempts being made to secure regional funding.

Mrs. Millar added: “NIPSA will continue to put pressure on other government departments to secure the funding required as this is the way to go. Exploris is a public service and it does not exist to make money.

“The way forward is for the new working group to put the maximum pressure on Stormont ministers to ensure Exploris continues not just for the next few years, but the next few decades and that it is a regionally funded facility.”