Mags Gargan
A priest based in Belfast’s Ardoyne has expressed disappointment at a missed opportunity to broker a deal between the Orange Order and Catholic residents which would have led to the dismantling of a neighbouring Loyalist protest camp.
Former Methodist president Rev. Harold Good, who witnessed the decommissioning of IRA weapons in 2005 with Fr Alec Reid, negotiated a deal between the Crumlin and Ardoyne Residents Association (Cara) and the Orange Order which would have allowed members of three lodges and accompanying bands to pass the flashpoint Ardoyne shopfronts tomorrow (Friday) without objections, to mark the 100th anniversary of the Battle of the Somme. In exchange the Twaddell loyalist protest camp would have been dismantled and the Orange Order would not apply to march past the area on their return from Twelfth celebrations this year.
However, the deal fell through when one of the three lodges pulled out, and Cara “came to conclusion that it would be an impossible sell to the wider public with only two of the lodges on board”, according to Fr Gary Donegan, Holy Cross parish priest.
Opportunity
“It was an opportunity but it was always going to be a massive ask, and I respect and support whatever the decision of the people would be, but the benefit to the locals was that Camp Twaddell and all that wastage would have been gone and there would have been a moratorium on return parades.
“But you can’t stop the dialogue, you just have to keep trying,” he said.
Serious violence broke out in 2013 when the Parades Commission banned Orangemen from passing the Ardoyne interface while making their way back from the main Twelfth parade and as a result loyalists created a protest camp at nearby Twaddell Avenue, which the PSNI estimates to have cost over £18million (€22m) over the past three years.