Kelly meets Parades Commission on Tour of North

Gerry Kelly

SINN FÉIN Assembly member for North Belfast Gerry Kelly led a party delegation to meet with the North’s Parades Commission at their Belfast Office on Wednesday. The meeting was held to deal with the determination of the Commission to allow loyalist supporters to parade past Ardoyne shops as part of the Tour of the North this Friday night.
Speaking before going into the meeting Gerry Kelly said:
“The Tour of the North parades through a number of interface areas in North Belfast. In recent years loyalist supporters following the bands and lodges have been banned from marching past Ardoyne shops. Inexplicably the Parades Commission has this year decided to allow these hangers-on, who are quite often drunk, to march through this nationalist area.
“It is entirely the wrong decision. There has been no real dialogue in the course of the past 12 months and the decision of the Commission to facilitate this sort of coat trailing through Ardoyne is unacceptable and unnecessary. It has made an already difficult situation which inevitably results from this parade even worse.
“Residents in Ardoyne have asked the Parades Commission to review their determination relating to the Tour of the North. It is my view that this must now happen speedily and the decisions taken reversed.”

 PARADES: No real dialogue in 12 months