Member's statement: Garvaghy Road: Rule of Law
Member's statement by Mr Jon Burrows on .
- MLA
- Mr Jon Burrows
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 29 September 2026
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Garvaghy Road: Rule of Law
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5761235
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Two things can be true at once. My party wants a resolution to a parade dispute that has gone on for a long time and has a dark past. The Orange Order has abided by the rule of law for the past 28 years. When I worked in a senior operational role in Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon policing district, members of the Orange Order walked up to the line every Sunday. They would stop at that line not because there was a line of police or there were barricades — the sergeant was often late to turn up — but because the law said, "Stop"; in fact, they often rang the police and said, "You need to hurry up and get here because we're at our point and want to hand over a letter". It was the law and nothing else that stopped them — adherence to the law — and that has to be recognised. I want a resolution to this. I agree that mediation is the best way to find a workable and permanent solution, but that can sit alongside something that is completely separate and needs to run in parallel: the rule of law in this country has to be upheld. It is a pillar of democracy because it places under the same set of rules the most powerful and the powerless. Whether you are the First Minister or you work in McDonald's or you have no job or whether you are 90 years of age or 18 years of age, the same set of rules is applicable to you. A big challenge is coming down the road for Sinn Féin, because its Members broke the law. A member of the Policing Board is looking at me: she could sit in the Policing Board's interview to appoint the next Chief Constable, yet she willingly and knowingly broke the law. She has disciplinary responsibility in holding to account senior police officers of assistant chief constable rank and above if they breach the code of ethics or the law, yet she willingly broke the law. In our highly political situation, you are challenging the legitimacy of this institution because you think that it was the right thing to do. I will be meeting the Chief Constable. Down the years, I have seen up close and personal the influence and the pressure that are applied to senior police officers and the Public Prosecution Service to turn a blind eye and to find 101 reasons not to prosecute people for breaking the law. I expect standards to be upheld by members of my party. If any of them had conducted the stunts that people in your party have pulled, I would have taken the whip from them, and they would not be in the party now. While I want a resolution and want us to dial down the drama around Drumcree — I want to get our police away from there and back to policing the streets — I will make sure that you are held to account for the crimes that, wilfully and knowingly, you committed. You have damaged the legitimacy of this place, and that is shameful.
528 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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