Mac Cionnaith sees `mini agreement' as the solution

Mr Breandan Mac Cionnaith, of the Garvaghy Residents' Coalition, denies ever saying there would be no Orange feet on the Garvaghy…

Mr Breandan Mac Cionnaith, of the Garvaghy Residents' Coalition, denies ever saying there would be no Orange feet on the Garvaghy Road.

That was a story put about by the Northern Ireland Office during the 1996 Drumcree standoff, he said yesterday.

However, he would "prefer" if the Portadown Orangemen were to take the same parade route back from Drumcree church as they had getting there. That way they could exercise their civil and religious liberties and his community could live in peace.

Drumcree was not about a 10-minute parade down the Garvaghy Road, it was about the Catholic community living free of fear, threat, and intimidation in Portadown, he said.

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Since 1972, 10 Catholics have been murdered in sectarian killings, with "dozens" seriously injured and "hundreds" attacked and assaulted there, he said.

Two attempts have been made on his own life in the town and he is warned regularly by the authorities that he is in danger of attack. Last year he was put on the Northern Ireland Office's "key persons" protection programme.'

"It is not a pleasant sensation being the target for every crackpot gunman or bomber out there. Or for my wife and family," he said. He accused some unionist politicians of "encouraging such extreme fanatics".

These days it is not safe for a Catholic to be in Portadown after dark, with the result that St Patrick's Hall in the town, where the Portadown Catholic Young Men's Association used to meet, has had to be put up for sale, he said.

Between July 1998 and July 1999, 20 Catholic families had to flee Protestant areas of the town to the Garvaghy estate where 97 per cent of the town's 6,000 Catholics now live. "Four to five hundred families" in Garvaghy had been forced out of mixed areas in the town, he said.

"Drumcree has a much broader, deeper context for the community here," he said.

The issue's resolution would involve "a mini-[Belfast]-agreement for Portadown, dealing with all the problems, not just the march," he said. To begin, the Orange Order should abandon its protests and help end the intimidation of the Catholic community in the town.

It should engage in face-to-face talks with "this community", including himself. If both those matters were agreed to, "anything is possible then" he said. But parties to such a process should not come to the table with ideas of a predetermined outcome.

The Orange Order would have to accept that negotiations might mean they would not walk down the Garvaghy Road, just as the people of Garvaghy would have to accept the Orange Order might walk the road, he said.

On the current Orange protests, he felt the Northern Secretary, Mr Mandelson, could be "a lot stronger in word and action", especially over the deployment of the RUC to deal with blockades.

He found Mr Mandelson "strangely silent these past two days."