LIVE: Parades Commission give green light to Drumcree parade

The Parades Commission has determined that the proposed Orange Order march at Drumcree this weekend will be permitted to go ahead.

The long running dispute centres on Orange Order parades between Portadown town centre and Drumcree Church, with the return route passing along the Garvaghy Road.

The Parades Commission formally banned the Orange Order from marching along the Garvaghy Road in June 1998.

The Orange Order refused to accept the decision and thousands gathered at Drumcree.

The security response was enormous, involving around 1,000 British troops and 1,000 RUC officers.

The confrontation was accompanied by a wave of loyalist violence across Northern Ireland.

There were 2,561 public order incidents between 4th and 14th July, including 615 attacks on security forces, 632 petrol bombs thrown and 467 vehicles damaged.

The crisis culminated in the murder of three young Catholic brothers, Richard, Mark and Jason Quinn, who died after their home in Ballymoney was firebombed.

Their deaths caused widespread revulsion and helped bring an end to the mass mobilisation surrounding Drumcree.

The Orange parade was never again permitted to travel along the Garvaghy Road.

The long-standing arrangement was dramatically disrupted last month The High Court in Belfast quashed the latest Parades Commission determination blocking the Drumcree parade.

However, the ruling did not establish that the Orange Order had a substantive right to march along the Garvaghy Road, nor did it remove the human rights concerns raised by residents.

Instead, the court challenge succeeded because of a procedural problem in that the Parades Commission accepted that not all six commissioners had properly signed off on the final determination before it was published.

The judge criticised the Commission’s procedures, describing its handling of the decision as involving “errors, shortcuts, and sloppy procedures”.

The ruling immediately reignited political tensions with criticism from unionist politicians who argued the judgment exposed problems with the Parades Commission.

Nationalist representatives, meanwhile, expressed concern that the ruling could reopen the type of confrontation associated with the 1990s.

Garvaghy Road residents maintained that parades through the area were finished following the events of 1998.

The Northern Ireland Secretary subsequently appointed senior judge Sir John O’Hara to conduct an independent review of the Parades Commission’s decision-making processes and governance.

Portadown District LOL No. 1 submitted a new notification seeking permission for 60 members to march along the Garvaghy Road on 27th September 2026.

The Parades Commission attempted to appoint TIDES Mediation NI as a third-party mediator.

However, the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition rejected the appointment, citing the organisation’s previous working relationship with the Orange Order as a conflict of interest.

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