Religious minorities ‘better treated in North than South’

Northern Protestants treated their minority community better after partition than Southern Catholics did theirs, an Orange Order leader suggested to the Seanad.

In a historic address, the order’s grand secretary Drew Nelson urged Ireland to rejoin the Commonwealth and hold an Orange parade in Dublin.

Appealing for the Republic to do more to preserve its Orange heritage, he criticised reductions in funding to Protestant schools and said border communities felt increasingly excluded.

Contrasting the declining levels of Protestant enclaves in Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan with growing Catholic numbers in Antrim, he said: “This of course begs the question as to which state looked after its minority better.

“Many of our members from the minority Protestant community in the border counties of this State have spoken to me over the years of the communal uncertainty of their survival as a viable self-sustaining community.”

Mr Nelson said Orange members in the South had a policy of “keeping their heads down” and spoke of “fear of incurring the displeasure” of the State.

He referred to the Love Ulster parade in Dublin in 2006 — which resulted in violent clashes around O’Connell St — as he called for an Orange parade in Dublin to be encouraged. “There was one planned in Dublin a few years ago but it was unable to proceed. Our members in the Republic would welcome the opportunity to hold a parade in their capital city.”

Mr Nelson said no such parades had taken place in a large population centre in the Republic since the Troubles began, though about 20 were held each year in small towns.

He said such parades were needed to keep the Protestant tradition viable in the Republic, and said Ireland “would be a poorer place” if its Orange or Protestant cultural heritage disappeared.

With Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams in the visitors’ gallery, he condemned republican terrorism and said republicans had targeted more than 300 attacks on Orange lodges because they disliked the unifying nature of the organisation in the Protestant community.

He thanked Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin for inviting him to the Seanad and compared the gesture to that of inviting Queen Elizabeth to the Republic.

“Together let us resolve that no longer will the burden of history stand in the way of normalisation of relationships,” he said.