An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business
Seanad Éireann — 2026-09-29
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Joe Conway (IND), Cultural and Educational Panel

Members of both Houses will have been taken aback at the recent re-emergence of the Garvaghy Road issue. After decades of relative quietude, all the old angst has erupted again. Many here are asking what the Parades Commission was thinking. With all the routine memes and tropes being rehearsed again, this issue underscores just how premature all of the recent talk about a united Ireland has been. Maybe that is what the Parades Commission was thinking. Who is to say? To an outside neutral like myself, it hardly seems proportionate that an urban distributor road in Portadown that has yet to reach a Department for Infrastructure classification can double as the touchstone of esteem in parts of Leath Cuinn i láthair na huaire ach is é mar atá sé. After nearly three decades of the Good Friday or Belfast Agreement, is it not preposterous that we are looking at the same old farrago of obstinacy, bile and confrontation that were de rigueur in the last generation?
It is worth noting that one of the main objectives of the Parades Commission is "To promote and facilitate mediation as a means of resolving disputes concerning public processions." In that regard, the commission might usefully embark on a programme of one-for-one scrappage of contentious marches, that is, ending a troubling march by an entity in one community along with a similarly fraught march from an entity in the other community, all the while pointing out that the courage to do things in a new and progressive way yields tangible positive results. Heaven knows there are plenty of candidate marches up in the North of Ireland to choose from. Ulster folk have been celebrated over the years as having a strong titter of wit about them. They might usefully employ this famous hard-headedness to assess starkly the folly of these parades.
Strutting along in serried rows is synonymous all over the world in all polities with muscle flexing and domination. I yearn to think that in Ireland, in our post-colonial 21st century, we are better and hopefully more enlightened than this. I respectfully request that the Treoraí Gníomhach convey to our Government my proposal here relating to the Parades Commission to assess if it has merits and may progress through the appropriate intergovernmental channels.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-09-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-29