Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition leader Breandan Mac Cionnaith will give an update this Saturday, October 24 in an AOH-sponsored webinar.
He will be joined by Gerard Rice, spokesperson for the Lower Ormeau Concerned Community, who now face a threatened November 7 march by the Apprentice Boys, causing a wave of fear in the area which suffered more than 50 murders during the Troubles.
Mac Cionnaith and Rice will appear in the live webinar broadcast at 11 a.m Eastern Time, 4 p.m. Irish time. Mac Cionnaith will explain the feelings of residents, as they face a renewed crisis with the Orange Order trying to overturn the ban both in court and by a series of new marches in Portadown and elsewhere.
Against this backdrop the Northern Ireland Parades Commission is considering a request by the Apprentice Boys for a march into the nationalist Lower Ormeau Road on Saturday, November 7.
This is the first try at parading in a contentious area since the Commission approved the parade through Garvaghy Road. Loyal Order parades have been banned from the nationalist Lower Ormeau Road since 1999.
The route, said the AOH webinar release, would pass Sean Graham’s bookmakers where five Catholics were murdered by loyalist paramilitaries in 1992. A memorial to these victims has been attacked multiple times in recent weeks. Gerard Rice has represented the Lower Ormeau Concerned Community, since violent clashes erupted over parading disputes 30 years ago.
The webinar will be available on AOH YouTube at https://aoh.com/RoadsOfConflict. Zoom Webinar Registration is at https://aoh.com/RoadsOfConflictZoomRegistration.
