Residents challenge march ruling
Nationalists in west Belfast are to challenge the Parades Commission’s decision to allow a limited Orange Order parade through their area.
Clonard residents are seeking a judicial review of the commission’s ruling on Saturday’s Whiterock parade.
The commission has said one lodge would be allowed onto the nationalist Springfield Road with the main parade re-routed via a former factory site.
The Order has said it would abide by the commission’s restrictions.
On Thursday, organisers of the parade from the Orange Order’s number nine district recommended a reduction in the number of Orangemen who would take part in the march.
This recommendation was later “overwhelmingly but reluctantly” backed by at a full district meeting.
Belfast DUP councillor William Humphrey said he hoped the parade would pass off peacefully.
“The district master and his colleagues have put in a plan to ensure that the parade we will have on Saturday will be a peaceful parade, will be a dignified parade,” he said.
“And it will be a parade that will ensure that the passage of the brethren along the Springfield Road returning to west Belfast Orange hall where they started out, that will bring honour to the tradition we are all proud to be a member of.”
Review
Earlier this week, the Parades Commission turned down a request from Sinn Fein to review its ruling on the march, which last year saw serious rioting.
The commission said there was no new evidence to look at.
The cost of policing the Whiterock parade last year and subsequent rioting in a number of loyalist areas was estimated at £3m by the PSNI.
Police officers were attacked with petrol bombs and blast bombs, as well as live rounds during the trouble.
Last year the Orange Order delayed the parade until September in protest after the commission re-routed the entire parade through the former Mackies factory site instead of allowing it through Workman Avenue.
The government-appointed Parades Commission was set up in 1997 to make decisions on whether controversial parades should be restricted.
