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

Conor Murphy (SF), Industrial and Commercial Panel

I rise to speak on the same subject. Last week, I raised this when I was speaking during the Order of Business in the hope that the clear attempt to provoke a reaction and bring us back to an issue which had been resolved for decades would not be indulged by authorities in the North. Sadly, we are today in a situation where, on the back of completely foolish advice from the PSNI which disregarded all previous history, the Parades Commission took a reckless decision to allow an Orange march down Garvaghy Road. Both the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste have made similar public statements about it. Their sense of bewilderment is shared by everybody outside of that very small core within unionism - it does not extend to the entirety of unionism at all - who have tried to provoke this particular issue in an attempt to drag us all back to the past. The broad sense in the North is one of absolute bewilderment and shock. There is also frustration that people in authority could take decisions that have such far-reaching implications for the community. There is fear as well as to where all of this will lead. In particular, there is fear among the residents of Garvaghy Road.
As my colleague, John Finucane, said, this was not a problem to be resolved, this was actually a peace to be protected. The Orange Order can march from Drumcree Church to Portadown and back at any stage they want without any impediment. They have sufficient routes to do that. Yet, there is an insistence on coming down the Garvaghy Road with all of the history attached to that community's experience. That is not going back just 30 years but hundreds of years. The experience of the community in that area is completely outrageous.
I was on the road over the weekend and I was pleased that there was a number of Oireachtas Members from various parties there. Anyone from the Seanad would be very much welcome in the community. We are delighted to see people coming up to show support for them. There is a real trauma being reopened there about past experiences but there is also a very strong mood of resilience and a determination not to be dragged back to the past. The complete mishandling of this by the Parades Commission, the PSNI, the NIO and the Secretary of State has shown us how fragile all of the hard-gotten gains of the past 30 years can be. That includes peace, the Good Friday Agreement, policing itself and reconciliation.
There is an urgent need to remove the threat of this parade from the Garvaghy Road residents. That can be done by the Secretary of State and the Chief Constable. They need to take that action now. This ongoing situation, where there are people effectively camped out on that road, day and night, to try to prevent that, is revisiting a trauma on a community that has suffered enough trauma over the years. The Secretary of State should act now to lift that sense of trauma over the community. I ask the acting Leader to urgently request that of the Government. I know there has been intervention and I heard Ministers speak. I am aware of discussions happening behind the scenes but they need urgent intervention from the Secretary of State to use the power he has to stop this now. We need to protect the peace and all of the gains we have made over the past 30 years and ensure that community can live in peace, as has been their strong desire for the last number of decades.

---

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/seanad/2026-09-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-29