Exploris aquarium: Councillors defer decision on closure for two months 25 September 2013 Last updated at 21:19 A council decision on whether or not one of Northern Ireland's top tourist attractions should be closed has been deferred for two months. Exploris aquarium in Portaferry, County Down, has been threatened with closure after a take-over deal collapsed. But at a full council meeting on Wednesday, councillors voted to defer their decision on the centre's future. The deferral motion was proposed by the DUP and it received unanimous support from other elected representatives. Community support Ahead of the meeting, more than 100 people had gathered outside the council's headquarters on Wednesday evening, to protest at the proposed closure. The protest was supported by members of the Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance (NIPSA) trade union, which had also called for the decision to be deferred. Antoinette McMillen from NIPSA said her trade union believed that "a public campaign has the potential to secure adequate regional funding from Northern Ireland central government departments and, as a consequence, secure the long term future of this extremely important facility for not only the Ards Peninsula but for the whole of Northern Ireland." "Time is needed to build political and community support for Exploris and we think that Ards Council should welcome the interest and widespread support that has been expressed throughout the community for the retention for Exploris as a public facility," she added. Anoraks However, not everyone in the area is supportive of the campaign to retain the tourist attraction on the shore of Strangford Lough. David McNarry, the United Kingdom Independence Party MLA for Strangford, has described Exploris as "a fancy play thing for anoraks." In a recent interview in the the Newsletter, Mr McNarry said: "Once seen is usually enough. It's in the back end of nowhere.