The Parades Commission's ban on the Drumcree Orange parade was a "massive assault on the civil rights of an important sector of the community in Northern Ireland", the Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, told the Assembly. He said that the Belfast Agreement made "copious reference to questions of culture, identity and ethos" and well as "the issue of rights".
"The Orangemen are not invading someone else's territory. They are not proceeding through housing estates. They are instead proceeding along the main road", he went on. "It is a sober and restrained exercise which is very much a part of the culture and tradition of the order."
Mr Trimble said that the only reasonable way to avoid confrontation next Sunday was for the Garvaghy Road residents to allow "a responsible, reasonable, lawful" procession to return from the Drumcree church along the road.
He called on nationalists to urge the Garvaghy Road residents to make a reasonable and generous response to what the Orange Order had done last year in cancelling a number of its pre-Twelfth parades.
For the SDLP, Mrs Brid Rodgers said that what existed on the Garvaghy Road was "a conflict of rights - between the right of freedom of assembly and the right of a community in a given area to live in peace". She added that the Parades Commission's ban would not have been necessary if dialogue had taken place between the residents and the Orange Order, which she was certain could have led to accommodation.