News Letter editorial on Saturday April 11 2026:
At long last, the public inquiry into plans for a gold mine in the Sperrins begins on Monday (see page 15 of the print edition, or click here to read it).
There should have been joy across Northern Ireland when it became known in the 2010s that we sit on one of world’s most important untouched gold deposits.
The value of the find is at least £20 billion, and extracting it would generate perhaps £3 billion in tax for the Treasury, to help fund hospitals, etc.
Above all, you would expect jubilation in west Tyrone at the prospects, with hundreds of well paid jobs on offer. Remember the gold rushes of America and other places in the 1800s? When people who understood the value of that precious metal flocked to locations where it was found.
In Northern Ireland there has been no joy, barely any interest, no sense of urgency, little help from government or the authorities, who are paralysed by ridiculous processes and by-the-book red tape nonsense and repetition. There has also been weakness from the UK governments, who have seemed to look on from afar, perhaps because it is Stormont’s remit. It took the US ambassador to the UK Warren Stephens to speak out about the farce, and the fact that it has taken 17 years and £300million spent by a private American company to get to the point where this inquiry is under way.
Stormont has been useless. Even coverage of the gold mine has been driven by a few local protestors, pandered to by Sinn Fein.
Hear, hear to the DUP MP Gavin Robinson, who said: “Seventeen years on, it’s a total disgrace that a decision hasn’t been made thus far.”
If the UK ever again gets the strong government it needs, then it must be clear that there will never be a repeat of this shambles. London must intervene on grounds of national infrastructure interest, and take control of matters when Stormont can’t.