Quarter of a century has passed since Orange Order's annual Drumcree parade was rerouted but issue is not 'dead duck' say Orangemen

Ahead of the 25th anniversary of the annual parade being rerouted, Portadown District LOL No 1 say the issue “is not a dead duck” and have asked representatives from every district lodge in Northern Ireland to join them on Sunday, July 9.

The application for the parade to and from Drumcree Parish Church lists four bands, 1500 participants and the same number of supporters.

The return route includes Garvaghy Road on the application and a ruling from the Parades Commission is due on June 28.

"This parade and service is the longest continuous commemoration in the Orange Order with the first recorded in 1807,” said Portadown District LOL No 1.

“This year marks 25 years from the first time the district was denied the right to return back to Carleton Street Orange Hall via its traditional route along the Garvaghy Road.”

The group said that over the past 25 years brethren have met at Drumcree to parade down to police lines with the only exceptions being during foot and mouth crisis in early 2000s and during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Orangemen said: “District Officers have taken part in processes and met virtually everyone from prime ministers to business leaders in the town to bring this impasse to a close.

"At times, they have met people whom they didn’t want to meet, and have been shunned by people, but it has been in the continuing effort to get the district home.

“The only group that has continuously not spoken with us is the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition who, from 1998, have been given a veto by the Parades Commission.

“In the last several months we have met with the Parades Commission to encourage them to set up mediation between both sides. They have not done so and have told us that they will not.

The group said that recently senior district officers met with Secretary of State Chris Heaton-Harris to see if he would look into what the Parades Commission has done to bring both sides to the table. They claimed he was not willing to do so.

Portadown District LOL No 1 said: “The district will not stop until we have completed our 1998 parade which we believe is now a legacy problem which has to be brought to a satisfactory resolution so that everyone can move on.

“Grand Lodge have asked that representatives from each district in jurisdiction join with us on Sunday, July 9 to show politicians, parades Commission, PSNI, and Garvaghy Road residents that this issue is not a dead duck, it is not consigned to history and that the wrong which was done to this District 25 years ago must be righted.”

The banning of the Drumcree parade in 1998 led to a period of sustained violence throughout Northern Ireland.

On July 12, 1998 three young brothers – Jason, Mark and Richard Quinn – were killed by the UVF in a firebomb attack on their home in Ballymoney.