LAST UPDATE | 17 mins ago

FURTHER TALKS ARE expected to take place as part of the latest bid to break the Drumcree parade stand-off, which has now entered a fourth day.

Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Bryant remains at Hillsborough Castle where on Tuesday he again hosted delegations from the Orange Order and Garvaghy Road residents.

Orangemen have been waiting since Sunday to take part in their parade down the mainly nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown.

Residents have been holding a protest there since the weekend after Northern Ireland’s Parades Commission granted the Orange Order permission to change their march route to the Garvaghy road. 

Following Tuesday’s talks, Orange Order Portadown District Master Nigel Dawson said: “We have once again had a very positive and constructive meeting with the Secretary of State.”

Breandán Mac Cionnaith, from the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition, said: “No parade is no parade, that’s it.”

Efforts to call off the parade were also brought to Government Buildings in Dublin where Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald and deputy leader Michelle O’Neill, Northern Ireland’s first minister, met Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Simon Harris.

O’Neill has faced criticism from unionists after she and senior colleagues were among a large crowd that blockaded the road in the predominantly nationalist Garvaghy Road area on Sunday to prevent the parade from passing the route.

Under parading laws in Northern Ireland, protests must be notified to, and approved by, the Parades Commission adjudication body.

‘Return to supremacy’

The Orange Order wants to march down Garvaghy Road in Portadown because “they want a return to supremacy”, Sinn Féin TD Matt Carthy has said.

Carthy, who is Sinn Féin’s justice spokesperson, was speaking on Virgin Media’s Tonight Show about the ongoing situation in the Co Armagh town. 

Carthy said the people of Portadown had “rebuilt their community” after the trauma and “deep, deep hurt” of the Troubles, while there is also “a cohort that is trying to turn the clock back”. 

“That isn’t both sides. That is, in my view, a set of people who are intent to not only go back 30 years but if they were to be honest want to go back to the old days when they didn’t just have marches whenever they wanted but they had their own state. 

“And they used that state to repress and oppress and discriminate an entire cohort of their population, namely the nationalist community,” he said. 

The show’s host Seámus Coleman said that people might be “puzzled” by the Orange Order’s desire to march down a road where they are not wanted, but Carthy said:

“We do know why they want to walk down the Garvaghy Road,” Carthy replied. 

“They don’t say it, and not many people say it. They want a return to supremacy. They want to be able to exert a dominance over the nationalist community.” 

The UK’s Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Bryant, met with representatives of the town’s residents and members of the Orange Order last night.

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🗣️ “We do know why they [Orange Order] want to march down the Garvaghy Road...they want a return to supremacy,”@mattcarthy on the Garvaghy Road impasse in Portadown and his views on why the Orange Order are determined to march.#TonightVMTV pic.twitter.com/sIHYdCy6kL

— TonightVMTV (@TonightVMTV) September 29, 2026

Yesterday, lawyers for the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition issued a fresh legal bid to prevent the Drumcree march.

The fresh application to the Court of Appeal in Belfast argues that the Parades Commission had “materially misdirected itself” on the police assessment of the potential for disorder and had not given an “accurate representation of the evidence received from PSNI” in its decision.

A number of Orange Order members remain at Drumcree Church expecting to be allowed to begin their permitted parade, which would pass along the mainly nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown.

However, protesters have maintained a presence at the side of the road, insisting that the parade should not be allowed to proceed.

It is the latest challenge to the march, which was given the go ahead after three separate legal hearings over the course of 13 hours late on Saturday and into the early hours of Sunday morning.

The hearing of the residents’ new challenge is listed for Friday.

With reporting from Press Association