Hundreds of young people take part in climate change protests across Ireland

Hundreds of young people have taken part in protests across the island of Ireland to demand urgent action to tackle climate change.

Events organised for Dublin, Belfast, Cork and Galway were among similar demonstrations staged around the world.

The climate strikes saw students and schoolchildren call for radical intervention to address global warming with the event slogan “Uproot the system”.

They accused governments of failing to act decisively enough on the issue.

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The events were staged just over a month before world leaders will gather in Glasgow for the United Nations climate change conference, Cop26.

Kay Laverty (19) from Fridays for Future Northern Ireland, helped organise the protest in Belfast city centre.

“Today is the global strike, with all sorts of environmentally conscious NGOs and groups over the world doing a protest with the hashtag ‘uproot the system’,” she said.

“This is basically a stance for climate justice and also a good way with Covid restrictions easing up to get ourselves out in the streets and get people about town seeing that we’re still here and we still care and we’re not going away.”

Ms Laverty said the pandemic had taken some momentum out of climate activism.

“I think now we’ve reached the right time where it’s okay to gather together and have a safe protest,” she added.

The Belfast activist said she hoped Cop26 would inspire discussion and more public discourse about the issue.

“We’re hoping to probably organise a few events around that locally here and just really draw as much attention to it as we possibly can,” she said. – PA