Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-09-29 ============================================================ Ivana Bacik (LAB), Dublin Bay South I welcome our visitors in the Gallery who are campaigning for children with additional needs. I want to pay tribute to Miriam Lord in the Press Gallery. She has contributed to the gaiety of the nation significantly and many of us will miss her column on Saturdays, even when we were sometimes the brunt of it. Her witty and sometimes barbed words were always a treat to read. I thank her for all she did. Last Thursday in Dublin, I met with residents of the Garvaghy Road. From them, I heard directly of their distress at the prospect of the Portadown Orange Order marching down the road they call home. Now, their fears are being realised. The grant of permission last Friday by the Parades Commission has reopened seriously deep wounds. We can all be clear that none of this about infringing on anyone’s traditions. More than 90% of marches in the North have proceeded without issue. The reason this march has been, rightly, curtailed for nearly 30 years is the enormous horror it causes for a community that has grappled for decades with a legacy of violence linked to so many killings. We think of Michael McGoldrick, the young Quinn brothers, Rosemary Nelson, Constable Frank O’Reilly and more. We cannot afford a return to that dark past and those grim days of the 1990s. Granting permission for the parade was reckless, irresponsible and wrong with no material change in the circumstances that had led to the march being refused on previous occasions. The Taoiseach has said that he wants to see calm restored, and I think we all agree with that. It seems today that an international mediator may be appointed to intervene in the dispute. The Taoiseach said that the Government remains in contact with the Executive, the British Prime Minister and the Secretary of State, Chris Bryant. That is important. Indeed, I appealed to the British Government to remain closely engaged when I spoke at the British Labour Party conference in Liverpool yesterday. However, it is a failure of Northern Ireland’s political system that the situation remains so tense and volatile today. Clearly, residents may well feel that the institutions set up to protect peace have abandoned them. We must not abandon them. As co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement, the Government has a role in restoring trust. We know that there are sinister actors who want to see mediation fail, and want to exploit the dysfunction in power-sharing and devolution to bring down the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement. We cannot allow them to win. Proactive steps must be taken to restore trust and calm, as the SDLP has said. Has the Taoiseach asked the PSNI why it told the Parades Commission that the Drumcree parade could safely take place, as it clearly could not? Will he use all diplomatic channels to ensure that the people of the Garvaghy Road are not subjected to further trauma and to ensure that the march does not take place? If mediation fails, will he call on the Secretary of State to exercise his powers to prohibit a parade under section 11 of the public processions Act 1998? --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-29/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-29