Protest in Belfast ahead of royal visit

Protesters demonstrated outside a hospital in the heart of West Belfast today against a visit by Prince Charles.

But after a strong force of riot police arrived at the main entrance the 100-strong crowd packed up their banners and posters and melted away.

They were nowhere to be seen by the time the prince arrived in a convoy of cars at the Royal Victoria Hospital on the Falls Road half-an-hour later.

The prince visited the hospital, one of the key engagements of his two-day trip to the North, to formally open a £71.6m (€103.4m) first phase of a new hospital built to replace that opened a century ago by his great-great grandfather King Edward VII in 1903.

The demonstrators, from a recently formed group An Fhírinne (The Truth), mounted their protest against what they called state-sponsored murder and collusion in the murder of Catholics by the security forces.

The prince is Colonel in Chief of the Parachute Regiment which was responsible for the 14 Bloody Sunday deaths.

Sinn Féin councillor Michael Ferguson said it was in “bad taste” and “appalling” that such a person should be formally opening the hospital.

He said the demonstrators were calling on the British establishment to admit to its involvement in “the murder of their own citizens”.

The organisation claims that workers in the hospital were not amused that the prince was opening the impressive seven-storey new building.

But hundreds of them turned out to stand at the main entrance to cheer him as he arrived and hundreds more lined every available window in surrounding buildings to get a glimpse of the royal visitor.

Prince Charles was taken on a tour of the 400-bed, 29,000-square metre hospital by chairman and chief executive William McKee and Stormont health minister Angela Smith.

He visited Northern Ireland’s Regional Intensive Care Unit, one of the largest of its kind in Europe, where he spoke to medical staff and the family of one of the patients.

Next he moved on to the fracture clinic where he spoke to both staff and patients before returning to the foyer to unveil a plaque marking the occasion.