An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-29
============================================================

Peadar Tóibín (AON), Meath West

The decision to allow the Orange Order to march down Garvaghy Road was the most destabilising decision that has been made in the North of Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement. Twenty eight years of improved community relations are now in jeopardy. The people in the North are in real fear. It is hard maybe for people in the South to understand that and the stress that has been created. There were 21 Catholics murdered in crimes related to the Drumcree stand-off in the nineties. The most horrific of those was the burning to death of three Quinn children in their own home. Orange marches have been the fuse for violence for 300 years. The start of the Troubles can be traced back to Orange marches. The Taoiseach rightly said this decision is wrong and incomprehensible but the logic of that is that it should be reversed. The Government is a co-guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement. What influence is the Taoiseach bringing to bear on the British Prime Minister to reverse this decision?

---

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