DUP wants parades body abolished
The Parades Commission should be abolished “to increase confidence in devolved policing and justice powers,” DUP leader Peter Robinson has said.
Mr Robinson was speaking on Tuesday evening during a debate at Westminster.
He said issues of parading needed to be resolved before the transfer of policing and justice power to the NI Assembly could take place.
Mr Robinson said the commission was “not a solution to problems, but part of the problem itself”.
“To leave these issues unresolved and to devolve powers of policing and justice would plant a seed at the heart of government in Northern Ireland which I believe would be corrosive and divisive and which ultimately could in fact be the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” he said.
Mr Robinson said he strongly supported the work of former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown, who is heading a review into parading in Northern Ireland, but he questioned the delay in the final report.
The DUP leader said the delay was not the fault of Lord Ashdown but was down to Sinn Fein seeking “to extract a political price to deliver that which has already been agreed”.
Commission
Sinn Fein assembly member John O’Dowd said abolishing the commission would not solve any problems.
“What Peter Robinson is saying that he wants to remove the Parades Commission and put in another adjudicating body, this will not resolve the parades issues, what will resolve it is discussions between the loyal orders and the nationalist and republican areas which are affected by those parades,” he said.
“The Ashdown report talks about the transfer of parading issues and decision making powers to local politicians, what we were saying is that if there is gong to be a transfer of parading issues then you have to transfer all responsibilities.”
Meanwhile, SDLP leader and Foyle MP Mark Durkan has said “the continued politicising of parades and policing by Sinn Fein and the DUP is a dangerous route to take”.
He was speaking after taking part in the debate at Westminster.
Mr Durkan said: “The creation of the Parades Commission meant that politics, in coming to the Good Friday Agreement, was not caught, transfixed and hamstrung by having to handle the parades issue.”
