Member's statement: Garvaghy Road: Orange Order Parades
Member's statement by Mr Philip McGuigan on .
- MLA
- Mr Philip McGuigan
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 28 September 2026
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Garvaghy Road: Orange Order Parades
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5761874
Read the official Assembly record
Text
The people of the Garvaghy Road should have every right to expect to live peacefully and without fear in their homes and in their community. For the past 28 years, they have been able to move forward on that basis. Unfortunately, a reckless, disastrous and shocking decision by the Parades Commission, at the behest of rejectionist unionists, has forced that local community and its residents to relive a past that they had tried so hard to forget by forcing an unwanted parade through their community. The dispute about that triumphalist and sectarian parade cost 21 citizens of the North their life over a three-year period, including three innocent children — Richard, Mark and Jason Quinn — in my constituency, who were murdered in their home during the Drumcree dispute in 1998. Let their names remind us of the cost of that sectarian parade. The days of the Orange Order holding the people of the Garvaghy Road and the people of Ireland to ransom are over, and they are not coming back. I was proud to stand with the residents on the Garvaghy Road over the weekend; indeed, people across Ireland, whether they were there in person or watching from their home, are rightly proud to stand with the people of the Garvaghy Road. It is an issue of equality, an issue of right and wrong.
As a resident of Dunloy, I know how communities fear such triumphal parades. No community — this includes the people who live on the Garvaghy Road — should have to live in fear in their own homes and have unwanted parades forced through their community. The people of the Garvaghy Road, and, indeed, people across the island of Ireland, deserve to be treated with equality and respect and to be permitted the simple request to live in peace.
303 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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