NORTHERN IRELAND’S politicians must agree quickly on a new system to govern decisions about controversial parades or the British government will appoint a new commission, Northern Secretary Owen Paterson has said.
During his first appearance before the House of Commons’ Northern Ireland Select Affairs Committee in his new position, Mr Paterson said he was “quite relaxed” about the Parades Commission being replaced by locally agreed bodies, but “we can’t have a vacuum” because of the danger that this would “embroil” the Police Service of Northern Ireland in making decisions about the routing of controversial Orange Order marches.
The current commission membership’s term of office comes to an end in December. Work on the appointment of a new commission membership will have to start being looked at “seriously” later this month and decisions would have to be taken in October, Mr Paterson told the Northern Ireland committee.
While the vast majority of the 3,800 parades held every year do not cause problems, he said: “It isn’t an option to go into the new year with a vacuum.”
DUP MP David Simpson said Orange parades had the potential to be major tourism attractions in coming years. “The Parades Commission has been a total disaster. A lot of good and positive things can come out of this,” he told Mr Paterson.
Questioned about the threat posed by dissident republicans, Mr Paterson said that there had been “no discussion with these people”, despite a declaration to the contrary by Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness.
When later pressed on this issue by Independent MP Sylvia Hermon, Mr Paterson said the British government had engaged in “no serious, meaningful discussions or negotiations with these groups”.
DUP MP Ian Paisley jnr questioned the PSNI’s resources to tackle the dissident republican threat and added that “these people are not just teenagers, they are involved in multimillion pound heists”.
