Members of both Houses will have been taken aback at the recent re-emergence of the Garvaghy Road issue. After decades of relative quietude, all the old angst has erupted again. Many here are asking what the Parades Commission was thinking. With all the routine memes and tropes being rehearsed again, this issue underscores just how premature all of the recent talk about a united Ireland has been. Maybe that is what the Parades Commission was thinking. Who is to say? To an outside neutral like myself, it hardly seems proportionate that an urban distributor road in Portadown that has yet to reach a Department for Infrastructure classification can double as the touchstone of esteem in parts of Leath Cuinn i láthair na huaire ach is é mar atá sé. After nearly three decades of the Good Friday or Belfast Agreement, is it not preposterous that we are looking at the same old farrago of obstinacy, bile and confrontation that were de rigueur in the last generation?

It is worth noting that one of the main objectives of the Parades Commission is "To promote and facilitate mediation as a means of resolving disputes concerning public processions." In that regard, the commission might usefully embark on a programme of one-for-one scrappage of contentious marches, that is, ending a troubling march by an entity in one community along with a similarly fraught march from an entity in the other community, all the while pointing out that the courage to do things in a new and progressive way yields tangible positive results. Heaven knows there are plenty of candidate marches up in the North of Ireland to choose from. Ulster folk have been celebrated over the years as having a strong titter of wit about them. They might usefully employ this famous hard-headedness to assess starkly the folly of these parades.

Strutting along in serried rows is synonymous all over the world in all polities with muscle flexing and domination. I yearn to think that in Ireland, in our post-colonial 21st century, we are better and hopefully more enlightened than this. I respectfully request that the Treoraí Gníomhach convey to our Government my proposal here relating to the Parades Commission to assess if it has merits and may progress through the appropriate intergovernmental channels.

I rise to speak on the same subject. Last week, I raised this when I was speaking during the Order of Business in the hope that the clear attempt to provoke a reaction and bring us back to an issue which had been resolved for decades would not be indulged by authorities in the North. Sadly, we are today in a situation where, on the back of completely foolish advice from the PSNI which disregarded all previous history, the Parades Commission took a reckless decision to allow an Orange march down Garvaghy Road. Both the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste have made similar public statements about it. Their sense of bewilderment is shared by everybody outside of that very small core within unionism - it does not extend to the entirety of unionism at all - who have tried to provoke this particular issue in an attempt to drag us all back to the past. The broad sense in the North is one of absolute bewilderment and shock. There is also frustration that people in authority could take decisions that have such far-reaching implications for the community. There is fear as well as to where all of this will lead. In particular, there is fear among the residents of Garvaghy Road.

As my colleague, John Finucane, said, this was not a problem to be resolved, this was actually a peace to be protected. The Orange Order can march from Drumcree Church to Portadown and back at any stage they want without any impediment. They have sufficient routes to do that. Yet, there is an insistence on coming down the Garvaghy Road with all of the history attached to that community's experience. That is not going back just 30 years but hundreds of years. The experience of the community in that area is completely outrageous.

I was on the road over the weekend and I was pleased that there was a number of Oireachtas Members from various parties there. Anyone from the Seanad would be very much welcome in the community. We are delighted to see people coming up to show support for them. There is a real trauma being reopened there about past experiences but there is also a very strong mood of resilience and a determination not to be dragged back to the past. The complete mishandling of this by the Parades Commission, the PSNI, the NIO and the Secretary of State has shown us how fragile all of the hard-gotten gains of the past 30 years can be. That includes peace, the Good Friday Agreement, policing itself and reconciliation.

There is an urgent need to remove the threat of this parade from the Garvaghy Road residents. That can be done by the Secretary of State and the Chief Constable. They need to take that action now. This ongoing situation, where there are people effectively camped out on that road, day and night, to try to prevent that, is revisiting a trauma on a community that has suffered enough trauma over the years. The Secretary of State should act now to lift that sense of trauma over the community. I ask the acting Leader to urgently request that of the Government. I know there has been intervention and I heard Ministers speak. I am aware of discussions happening behind the scenes but they need urgent intervention from the Secretary of State to use the power he has to stop this now. We need to protect the peace and all of the gains we have made over the past 30 years and ensure that community can live in peace, as has been their strong desire for the last number of decades.

I also want to speak about the Garvaghy Road. I lived and worked up North and many of my friends lived and worked around the Garvaghy Road. They lived around Portadown and were traumatised back in the late 1990s, and are still traumatised by the horrific and brutal violence that surrounded the Orange marches around that time. The community of the Garvaghy Road has the right to live free from sectarian violence and domination. They do not want to be sucked back in to polarisation and division. It is a violation of their right to live peacefully. Like Senator Murphy said, over 90% of parades go unrestricted and the organisers of this Orange march know there are loads of other routes that have been identified which they could use.

The organisers of this march have used – it has to be called out – inflammatory language, such as “staging post”, “culture wars” and “unfinished business”. It looks like a deliberate act of provocation. Why is this happening? What is the end game? Is it because there has been some more talk about a united Ireland, or the fact that there are elections coming up in May? Communities have been dragged back into this. The Garvaghy Road Residents’ Coalition has called for international mediation and an international moderator.

I agree that it is up to the PSNI, and questions must also be asked about the Parades Commission. How was this allowed to happen in the first place? Maybe the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Chris Bryant, needs to intervene and overturn the decision. No one wants to see the destabilisation of Stormont. People are still living and suffering through the cost-of-living and housing crises. This talk about institutions breaking down cannot be happening. It is a one-sided and very much uneven playing field here. That needs to be called out. I would welcome anything we can do in this House to ensure this is supported from us down here in the South.