Northern Ireland
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-29
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Ruth Coppinger (PBP), Dublin West

I send solidarity to the residents of the Garvaghy Road. We met a delegation here last week and I salute their organisation and their determination. This is a working-class community standing up against a threat to drag Portadown and the North back to the past. The Orange Order seeking to push this march through is sectarian bullying. The march was always offensive to the community. It is not wanted. It is a catalyst for sectarian division. Children and adults have died in the past over this. Twenty-eight years without these sort of marches have been very helpful for this community. The cynical opening up of these old sectarian divisions is disgraceful. This is being dredged up, it would seem, by politicians to whip up division in an attempt to boost them ahead of elections next year, to divert attention maybe from sexual assault trials and so on. It is very important that working class people, Catholic and Protestant, stand together against this attempt to drag the North back into sectarianism.

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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