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Harryville Mass cancelled for the summer

The local priest at Our Lady's Church in Harryville, Ballymena, has announced that the Saturday evening mass, which has been the target of anti-Catholic demonstrations by Loyalists for almost nine months, will be suspended until September. He said this was due to the fact that over the summer period attendance at mass tended to decline due to holidays and also it was to help ease the situation in Harryville. Harryville is a largely Protestant community in the suburbs of Ballymena. Several weeks ago Loyalists were able to break through RUC lines protecting the church and did some damage to the church before they were driven out.

Orange Order announces plans for demonstrations

The Orange Order has announced that it has filed notice for a series of demonstrations in Belfast in the week following the contentious Drumcree Church parade which is scheduled for Sunday, 6 July. The RUC have sated that Orange Lodges throughout Belfast have filed notification of parades for that week. The parades include one almost every day along the Lower Ormeau as well as the so- called "Tour of the North" in north Belfast which also passes through Catholic areas.

Meanwhile the RUC announced that they had re-routed a proposed Orange Order march through the Lower Ormeau on 29 June and imposed restrictions on the parade today (22 June) in the village of Bellaghy, Co Derry. They have been told that they can only march as far as the Orange Hall in the village. The RUC also announced that they were imposing restrictions on the Bellaghy Residents demonstration today, confining it to a small part of the village. Bellaghy is a predominantly nationalist village.

Spokesperson for the Bellaghy Residents' Jim Hasson has criticised the RUC. He said: "None of this was necessary. If the Orange Order had only agreed to talk to the people who live in Bellaghy, the police would only have been needed to direct traffic."

Gerard Rice of the Lower Ormeau Concerned Community has criticised the decision of the Orange Order to organise a series of parades in contentious areas: "It is quite clear to everybody that these parades are organised and orchestrated to instil fear and to intimidate. Both the RUC and the British Government must stand up and say 'It is quite clear what the motivation of these parades are and they are not going to happen'."

Irish News UpDate

This week's Irish News Up-date will be slightly curtailed. Due to a mixture of factors, for example the need to send monitors to Bellaghy to cover the parade there today and the production of a major new Pat Finucane Centre publication which has to be ready for the printers by Tuesday, it is not possible to offer the usual comprehensive news service this week! Over the next few days we will be adding some news events to this page, so come back at least until Tuesday. Many thanks for your understanding.