More talks over Drumcree dispute as stalemate continues

The Northern Ireland Secretary, Sir Chris Bryant, is planning further talks with community leaders on Wednesday over the the controversial Drumcree march.

It comes after lawyers for the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition issued a fresh legal bid to try to prevent the march from going ahead.

Members of the Orange Order are still waiting to begin their permitted parade, which was due to take place on Sunday, and walk down the mainly-nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown.

The residents' appeal will be the latest challenge to the march, which was given the go ahead after three separate legal hearings over the course of 13 hours late on Saturday and into the early hours of Sunday morning.

A group of protesters remain at the Garvaghy Road.

Members of the Orange Order left Drumcree Church overnight - for the first time since the stand off began - but Deputy District Master Alastair Power returned on Wednesday morning.

He said other members would also be there throughout the day.

There was another attempt by Portadown District Lodge to walk the route at 22:10 BST on Tuesday.

Accompanied by DUP MP Carla Lockhart, Power asked the police if they could facilitate their parade. The answer was no.

The Drumcree parade, which in the 1990s sparked some of the most serious disorder in Northern Ireland's history, was due to go ahead for the first time in almost 30 years after a series of legal challenges.

Since 1998, the Orange Order had been banned from completing its Drumcree march - and until this year had been repeatedly refused permission to finish the route by the Parades Commission, which was set up to adjudicate disputes.

The Orange Order is a Protestant pro-British organisation, while the area where it wants to walk - specifically along the Garvaghy Road - is largely Catholic and predominantly inhabited by pro-Irish nationalists.

Both the Orange Order and members of the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition met Northern Ireland Secretary Sir Chris Bryant at Hillsborough Castle again on Tuesday.

Speaking on his way into the talks, Breandán Mac Cionnaith, from the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition, said "reroute the sectarian parade, that's it".

Speaking after a separate meeting with the secretary of state, Portadown District Master Nigel Dawson said the talks had been "positive and constructive".

Later, hundreds of people attended a meeting beside St John the Baptist Church on the Garvaghy Road for an update on the talks process.

Speaking to the media outside the hall, Mac Cionnaith said the only person the residents had left to meet was PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher.

He said he will be waiting for Boutcher to let him know when the meeting would happen, adding: "Or is he going to hide behind a wall of uniforms of police in riot gear?"

Meanwhile, the Portadown district mastertold hundreds of supporters at an outdoor rally in the town that unionist leaders needed to keep pressure on the secretary of state and chief constable and that the law must be "respected and applied".

Nigel Dawson said: "Tonight, my position, our position, is very, very clear. The chief constable, who is responsible for ensuring the law is complied in this country, must apply the law.

"He must respect the High Court judgement and he must deliver us safely and securely back to Carleton Street Orange Hall via the Garvaghy Road because that's what the Parade's Commission said and that is what a High Court has said.

"He needs to deliver that now."

Sinn Féin have called on the Irish government to intervene in the dispute.

The Orange Order, the most prominent of the loyal orders associated with Protestants in Northern Ireland, holds thousands of parades every year and the vast majority pass off without incident.

However, many Catholics see the marches as sectarian and object to them passing through, or close to, Catholic or nationalist areas.

The Garvaghy Road had been part of the Drumcree route, but by the mid 1990s nationalist residents protested against the parade. The row sparked some of the most serious public disorder in Northern Ireland's history and was linked to several murders.

The row reemerged after a court case in which a ruling by the Parades Commission - the organisation formed during the Drumcree dispute to decide on contentious marches during Northern Ireland's parading season - was overturned.

On Friday, following 28 years of unsuccessful applications, the commission decided the march could go ahead with restrictions in place.

Rather than start at 13:00 on Sunday as intended, the commission said it could begin no later than 08:00 and with 35 participants rather than the 60 the Orange Order requested.

However that decision was challenged in several Belfast courts on Saturday, before finally being given the go ahead just hours before it was due to take place.

The Drumcree dispute was one of Northern Ireland's most serious parading disputes during the 1990s, when stand-offs over attempts by the Orange Order to march along the Garvaghy Road were accompanied by riots, roadblocks and killings.

When the Orange Order was prevented by police from walking down the route in July 1995, there was a tense stand-off. It was the same for the next three years.

Violence related to the dispute resulted in riots, roadblocks and murders across Northern Ireland.

In 1998, the newly-established Parades Commission ruled that the Orange Order should not march down the road - a decision upheld until Friday.