Former taoiseach Bertie Ahern said the decision to allow the Drumcree parade to take place was “choreographed far too tight, far too dangerous”, and that the stand-off that followed was inevitable.
The former Fianna Fáil leader, who was head of the Irish government during the height of the Drumcree dispute, said the Garvaghy Road residents have not changed their position on the Orange Order march.
He said the decision by the Orange Order to bring its amended application to the Parades Commission was the “wrong place” to bring it.
Speaking to RTÉ, he said that after the High Court in Belfast quashed the commission’s last determination over the march, he could “see where the danger is”.
The body has blocked the order from marching along the Garvaghy Road in July every year since 1998.
“The word was coming out that the Orange Order was going to try to do a compromise and change their position, which has been their position since after that terrible ’95, ’96, ’97 marches that were forced down and led to so much turmoil across Northern Ireland,” Mr Ahern said.
“You could see where this was going. Unfortunately, I would have thought that the mediation and conciliation efforts should have started there but they didn’t, so once they made the determination then everything was too quick.
“Friday night you have the Parades Commission, Saturday you have a court case then you have an appeal and the main court of the land making a decision at 2.30am, hours before the parade.
“I think the whole thing was choreographed far too tight, far too dangerous and with the inevitably of what happened.
“The Orange Order coming in with a new proposal to the Parades Commission probably was the wrong place to be bringing it.”
He said that the Garvaghy Road residents have not changed their position on the parade since it was banned almost 30 years ago.
Mr Ahern said that following the High Court ruling, there should have been further engagement with the Orange Order and the residents.
“Going the other way around was unfortunately not going to work,” he added.
“The courts are the courts and I think it’s regrettable that played out because at the end of the day it allows the unionist side and the Orange side to say ‘of course you haven’t honoured what the courts decided’.”
He said the next steps should involve a mediator as the issue never ended.
“Some people said to me that they thought the Garvaghy Road issue was finished with. It was never finished and every week the Orange Order put in their application for this march so it was never ended.
“It still isn’t over and turn this on its head, but I think the effort should be now to try and see if there is a resolution to this that brings it to an end, not something that says the Orange Order are going to continue.
“As hard as that is, I know we don’t want to go back to the stage of ‘out, out, out’, ‘never, never, never’.
“That will get us nowhere.
“What we need (is) to try and calm down a bit. The First Minister and deputy First Minister should have coffee or tea this morning and try to mend this otherwise it is a disaster and will affect the institutions, it will affect other parades.”
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