Loyalist's hopes over Shankill visit

A loyalist paramilitary leader expressed his hope today that President Mary McAleese would be able to one day visit Belfast’s hard-line protestant Shankill Road.

Ulster Defence Association brigadier Jackie McDonald paid tribute to the Belfast-born president and her husband Martin as they visited primary school children in the loyalist Taughmonagh estate in the south of the city.

Earlier, President McAleese met pupils and staff from Edenbrooke Primary School at a reception in a south Belfast hotel, after cancelling plans to visit them on the Shankill Road because of security concerns.

There had been fears that police guarding the President would be attacked in Shankill after serious rioting on Monday in the area.

However, Mr McDonald downplayed suggestions that there was any threat from loyalist paramilitaries.

He said: “At a time like this when the Parades Commission has decided that Orangemen cannot walk on certain parts of the Shankill Road and some people have decided that the President of Ireland could walk, you can understand the confusion there and the resentment.

“With the trouble that the local community has been having with the PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) anyway, it could have caused problems all around.

“I would be very hopeful (that the President will eventually visit the Shankill).

“Like I say, the people of the Shankill have been through an awful lot and that will be a decision for them.

“But hopefully Mary’s personality and Martin’s sincerity will work wonders for us all to move in the right direction.”