Upgrade of A5 road to Derry quashed by High Court in Belfast
Mr Justice McAlinden told the court that he was aware his ruling would bring 'fresh anguish' to the families of those who lost loved ones on the road, but said the proposed scheme breached elements of the Climate Change Act 2022.
The North's Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins was at the Royal Courts of Justice to hear the ruling on Monday.
The Executive gave the green light for the long-awaited upgrade to the A5 in October.
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However, judicial review proceedings were brought against the Department for Infrastructure by nine applicants, including residents, farmers and landowners opposed to the £1.2 billion (€1.4 billion) scheme.
There have been more than 50 deaths on the A5, one of the North's main road arteries that links Derry with Aughnacloy in Co Tyrone, since 2006.
The road connects the northwest – Donegal and Derry – to Dublin through regional towns including Strabane and Omagh.
A scheme to turn the road into a dual carriageway was first approved by the Executive in 2007 but it has been held up by legal challenges and uncertainty over funding.
This is the third time in 18 years that approval for the road's upgrade has been overturned in court.
Many relatives and friends of people killed and injured on the road have long campaigned for a modernised road to improve public safety on the route.
Justice McAlinden acknowledged in his judgment that it was 'likely that delays in the progression of this scheme will coincide with the occurrence of further loss of life and serious injury on the existing road'.
But he added that 'the decision to proceed with the scheme must be taken in accordance with the law'.
'The principle of the rule of law cannot be subverted, even if the motivation for doing so is to achieve what is deemed to constitute a clear societal benefit.'
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Irish Times
20 hours ago
- Irish Times
Twelfth of July: ‘We're not into the bonfires, but the parades are different. Today is a family day'
Umbrellas decorated with Union Flags shielded babies and the elderly from the sun in a Co Antrim town during a scorching Twelfth of July parade on Saturday. Thousands of people lined the route in Glengormley to watch the visiting Black Skull Flute Band from Glasgow lead the Carntall Orange Order lodge, accompanied by dozens of bands. The town, on the outskirts of north Belfast, was one of 19 venues across Northern Ireland chosen to host the annual parades, which mark the victory of Protestant William III over Catholic James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Around 300 loyalist bonfires were lit before the 'Twelfth' – most on the eve of the parades – and while most passed off without incident, a pyre on which an effigy of an immigrant boat was burned is being treated as a hate crime by police . READ MORE A controversial bonfire in south Belfast, which has asbestos on the site and is close to an electricity substation which powers the city's two main hospitals, was also lit despite appeals by the Stormont Environment Minister. The Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service said it dealt with a 'challenging' situation on Friday evening and one firefighter was attacked while attending a bonfire in Lisburn, Co Antrim. A woman watching the Glengormley parade on Saturday said the 'boat incident' at the bonfire in Moygashel, Co Tyrone, had 'really annoyed her'. 'My grandson is mixed race, born and reared in Northern Ireland, and what happened in Moygashel scared me … of course it was racist,' Karen Buchanan said. Marchers in Belfast take part in the traditional Twelfth commemorations. Photograph: Mark Marlow/PA 'My grandson is 27, works in a law firm and still gets abuse. It's a small minority behind this, they know nothing. 'They don't know about our own culture, they don't know what we're really about.' Wearing a red, white and blue garland around her neck, Ms Buchanan's daughter, Ashley Crosby, said the annual Twelfth parade was an important event for her family. 'We never miss it. Every year we come and this year it's on our doorstep,' she said. A member of a flute band prepares to take part in the annual Twelfth of July parade. Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty Calls were made for increased 'tolerance' by an Orange Order leader on Saturday. The order's grand secretary, Mervyn Gibson, told crowds gathered in Keady, Co Armagh, following the July 12th parades, that they belonged to a to a 'vibrant and diverse community proud of our heritage, culture and British citizenship'. The senior Orangeman and Presbyterian minister urged them to 'better promote these truths'. An Orangeman prepares to take part in the annual Twelfth of July parade in Belfast. Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty 'And I believe this generation and the next are up for this challenge. We must seek to create understanding, education, tolerance and mutual respect,' he said. Around 30 parades due to take place were categorised as sensitive by the Northern Ireland Parades Commission. An Orange Order feeder parade passed the nationalist Ardoyne shops in north Belfast without incident on Saturday. Members of a flute band chat in front of a mural of the band The Beastie Boys as they prepare to take part in a Twelfth of July parade in Belfast. Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty The interface – the shops are close to the unionist Twaddell area – became a flashpoint for some of the worst sectarian summer violence until a deal was brokered between the two communities in 2016. It has remained peaceful since then. On Sunday, a parade will return past the Ardoyne shops, but will be restricted to one band and 50 members of the order. PSNI chief constable Jon Boutcher appealed for mutual respect at the marking of events. 'Our officers will be on the ground throughout the weekend, working in partnership with community leaders, event organisers and local representatives to support lawful, peaceful and family-friendly events,' he said. 'However, where necessary we will take firm and proportionate action to keep people safe.' Yvonne McDonnell from Ballinderry attends the Twelfth of July celebrations in Lisburn, Co Antrim. Photograph: Jonathan McCambridge/PA At the Glengormley parade, Lisa Walter joined her daughter Grace to watch the marching bands. They live across the road and brought their fold-up deck chairs. 'It's very important for us. It's our culture. You see people who you haven't seen since this time last year,' Mrs Walter said. 'We've never gone to the bonfires – too much drinking and yahooing. You're either into them or you're not. But the parades are different. Today is a family day.' People take part in a Twelfth of July parade in Belfast. Photograph: Mark Marlow/PA
Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
NI firefighters deal with ‘challenging night' ahead of July 12th parades
Firefighters in Northern Ireland said they dealt with a challenging night as bonfires were lit ahead of the July 12th celebrations. Tens of thousands will take to the streets across the North for the traditional Orange Order parades on Saturday. The events will be spread across 19 main locations to mark the 334th anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne where the Protestant King William of Orange triumphed over the Catholic King James II. It comes after the burning of bonfires at an estimated 300 locations in loyalist neighbourhoods on Thursday and Friday nights. READ MORE While most of the bonfires passed off peacefully, there was condemnation after effigies of migrants in a boat were burned on a bonfire in Moygashel, Co Tyrone. Pictures of the rap band Kneecap and Irish flags were also burned on other pyres. But the most contentious bonfire was located on a site containing asbestos and close to an electricity sub station off the Donegall Road in south Belfast. [ Politics 'Isn't it brilliant' a mother says, photographing her children at the bonfire topped with an effigy of a migrant boat Opens in new window ] The Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service (NIFRS) said it dealt with 72 bonfire related incidents across the evening. One firefighter was attacked while attending a bonfire in Lisburn, Co Antrim. [ Opinion Some see July 12th bonfires as sectarian. For others, they're about social cohesion Opens in new window ] NIFRS area commander Andy Burns said: 'Between 6pm 11 July and 2am 12 July 2025, we received 277 emergency 999 calls. 'This resulted in our firefighters attending 194 operational incidents, 72 of which were bonfire related. Peak activity was between 10pm and 1am. 'During this period, the number of emergency calls received increased by 154 per cent when compared to 2024. 'It was a challenging and extremely busy night for NIFRS with an increase in demand for our regional control centre and emergency response,' he said. 'Disappointingly, a firefighter was attacked while attending a bonfire in Lisburn. They were not injured and remained on duty. 'This was an isolated incident and not reflective of the support shown to firefighters in carrying out their duties across the evening.' Firefighters work to protect an electricity sub station as a bonfire burns at Meridi Street, off the Donegall Road in Belfast. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA Wire Of all the loyal order parades to take place on Saturday, around 30 have been officially categorised as sensitive by the Parades Commission. Locations of sensitive parades this year include Belfast, Coleraine, Keady, Dunloy, Rasharkin, Strabane, Newtownabbey, Maghera, Newtownbutler, Portadown, Glengormley and Bellaghy. More than 4,000 police officers and police staff will be working on July 12th. On the 11th night, around 1,200 officers were deployed to monitor public safety at bonfires. The cost of policing parades and bonfires in Northern Ireland through spring and summer was £6.1 million last year, a figure that was up £1.5 million on the previous year. The bill, which covers the period April 1 to August 31, also includes the cost of policing republican commemorations around Easter and events to mark the mid-August anniversary of the introduction of internment without trial during the Troubles. The PSNI expects the costs in 2025 to be higher still. This is due to falling police numbers and the resultant increased reliance on paying overtime to ensure enough officers are on duty for the events. Chief Constable Jon Boutcher has urged mutual respect in the marking of events. 'Our officers will be on the ground throughout the weekend, working in partnership with community leaders, event organisers, and local representatives to support lawful, peaceful, and family-friendly events. However where necessary, we will take firm and proportionate action to keep people safe,' he said. 'Our priority remains the safety and wellbeing of everyone.' On Sunday morning, an Orange Order parade has been permitted to pass Ardoyne shops in north Belfast restricted to one band and 50 members of the order. It is a return parade at a former flashpoint which traditionally took place on the evening of July 12th often resulting in violent scenes. Meanwhile, the traditional July 13th events organised by the Royal Black Preceptory in the village of Scarva, Co Armagh will take place on Monday. The event includes a parade as well as a sham fight between actors playing rival monarchs William and James. - PA
Irish Times
a day ago
- Irish Times
‘It makes us look like Neanderthals': UDA leader laments loyalist street violence but sees role for ‘paramilitary influence'
Jackie McDonald, the influential south Belfast Ulster Defence Association leader, listened recently to former Alliance leader John Alderdice's complaints that loyalist paramilitaries have not gone away, and will not do so. 'Lord Alderdice says nothing is happening, but you don't know the hard work that goes into making nothing happen,' says McDonald in community offices in the Taughmonagh estate in south Belfast. McDonald's line about Alderdice is sharp. In a world where few agree on much, there is general agreement that whatever about other loyalist leaders McDonald has put in the hard yards in his own terrain to maintain discipline and order. The plan by the Irish and British governments to appoint an interlocutor to establish whether loyalist paramilitaries, and republican dissidents, can be persuaded to fade away is 'a good thing', he says. READ MORE However, he opposes the central aim of the idea first put forward by the Independent Reporting Commission of disbandment: to bring about the disbandment of all paramilitary organisations. Such a course makes no sense, says McDonald, who has been involved in the Ulster Defence Association since the early 1970s. 'For loyalist paramilitaries to go away would leave a void that would be filled within minutes,' he says. 'If the UVF, the UDA, the Red Hand Commando, whatever, were to say, 'We're leaving the stage at 12 o'clock tonight', at 12.05 there'd be the new UDA, or another version of the UVF or Red Hand.' Criminal elements would 'fill that void', though in the view of many observers in Northern Ireland large elements of loyalist paramilitarism have long been involved in drug-dealing, prostitution and extortion. 'There's no paramilitary activity here, but there's paramilitary influence.' And that, he believes, is needed. 'The drug dealers and the criminals have to know that it's there, that you can't mess about, that the community comes first. The same exists in republican areas.' McDonald has managed to keep the south Belfast UDA people 'fairly sensible and steady', in the words of one He also argues that the threat posed by dissident republicans still offers reasons why loyalist paramilitaries cannot quit the stage. Union flags fly proudly outside the Taughmonagh offices – one visited by his long-time friend and former president of Ireland Mary McAleese and her husband, Martin. Everything looks ready for this Twelfth of July weekend. This and other parts of south Belfast such as Sandy Row and the Village area have been McDonald's bailiwick for decades. He joined the UDA in July 1972, immediately after the Bloody Friday bombings in the city, when the Provisional IRA exploded at least 20 bombs in Belfast, killing nine and injuring more than 130. 'Bloody Sunday or internment did it for young republicans, Bloody Friday did it for me,' says McDonald. He rose steadily, ending up as one of the UDA's six brigadiers, his turf south Belfast. He will be 78 next month, but is still in great shape, five weekly visits to the gym keeping him energetic and trim. Jackie McDonald, former head of the UDA. Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty McDonald has a reputation as 'a hard man', but one many politicians and officials believe they can do business with. When Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair's reign caused mayhem in the Lower Shankill, it was McDonald who brought him to heel, forcing him to flee to Scotland in 2003. In the years since, McDonald has managed to keep the south Belfast UDA people 'fairly sensible and steady', in the words of one, including during the internecine loyalist feuds that have flared from time to time. Throughout, McDonald insists that he is speaking only for his own patch, but accepts that he knows of the charges made linking loyalists to criminality of all hues. However, he will not comment. 'I hear the same stories, but I don't get involved. We're still very close with our colleagues. I don't know who's doing what, or if the allegations are true, or if the allegations are exaggerated.' Drug dealing happens in south Belfast, like elsewhere, but his members are not involved, he says. 'It's not about being a community worker by day and a terrorist or a paramilitary by night. It's nothing like that here,' he says while acknowledging that 'unfortunately' that is not the case everywhere. He refers with disdain to those whose lifestyle is one of 'Rolexes, 4x4s and three holidays a year'. More than a decade ago, he told loyalists gathered on Remembrance Sunday on Sandy Row: 'There's no such thing as a loyalist drug dealer. If you're a loyalist, you wouldn't want to be a drug dealer, and if you're a drug dealer, you can't be a loyalist.' Jackie McDonald at the Sandy Row Remembrance Day service in Belfast. Photograph: Paul Faith/PA Favouring a quasi-local policing role for paramilitaries, he sees no contradiction in arguing for tougher action by the courts and police against drug dealers and other forms of criminality. 'People get caught and they get a slap on the wrist, they get suspended sentences. If you're a young adult caught selling drugs at this time of year, you say to yourself, 'I'll not be in court now until about October/November. The winter's coming. The cold nights are coming. I do three months, or I do six months over the winter, and I won't have to worry about paying for the heat or electric or anything.' This is the way they think.' Too many young loyalists 'think they missed out on the conflict', he says. 'They're saying, 'We'll not be told what to do by grey-haired old men. We'll do a better job than you.' A better job on who? 'Republicans are not a physical threat any more. It's the drug dealers are a threat. But some of them want to build up some sort of notoriety, get themselves a reputation. They get involved in protests and if it's about flags, about immigration, about any protest at all, it always ends up with the police getting hammered. And that takes away from everything. That makes us all look like Neanderthals, it doesn't do the reputation of loyalism any good at all.' [ 'Isn't it brilliant' a mother says, photographing her children at the bonfire topped with an effigy of a migrant boat Opens in new window ] A 40-minute drive west from Taughmonagh is Moygashel, the centre of controversy this week when loyalists placed effigies of migrants in a boat on a bonfire with anti-immigration banners. It came as the Institute for Strategic Dialogue , a counter-extremism organisation, published a new report showing anti-migrant far-right figures in the Republic are increasing their co-operation with loyalist groups in Northern Ireland. The report said such groups were entering a 'more organised phase'. Asked about last month's rioting in Ballymena, McDonald said he was 'totally against' the street violence that erupted after two Romanian-speaking teenagers were charged with the attempted rape and sexual assault of a teenage girl. However, he says a 'tipping point' on immigration has been reached, with many people having genuine concerns. 'There is a feeling that these people are getting priority and preference over some of our people.' Police officers on Clonavon Road in Ballymena, during riots over an alleged sexual assault in the Co Antrim town. Photograph: Liam McBurney/PA Wire McDonald admits his paramilitary past, including a 1989 racketeering sentence. 'I got 10 years for extortion, yeah, but that was to buy guns, to look after prisoners' families, to buy explosives. It was something that I hated doing. 'I'd been doing all sorts of things for many, many years, and I got away with it, but I knew that getting involved in that sort of thing was going to get me 10 years, and it did. But now we don't need the criminality. 'We don't need to buy guns any more. We haven't got prisoners any more. What's the money for? Where does the money go?' says McDonald, who acknowledges the record of loyalist paramilitaries carrying out sectarian killings during The Troubles. 'On many occasions that was true.' But republican paramilitaries must own their sins, too: 'I've had this argument with IRA members. They'd say they were fighting for 'Brits out'. There were at least 50,000 people in uniform here, between the British army, the RUC, prison officers, etc. 'Fifty-thousand uniforms and the IRA still planted bombs on the Shankill Road and in the pubs and the clubs and in the Sandy Row. What was that? That was to terrorise the people. That was pure sectarianism.' Mary changed things for us. The politicians didn't want to know us. Mary played a vital role. She is a great woman — McDonald on Mary McAleese Faced with talk of Irish unity and Sinn Féin successes, McDonald emphasises that unionist politicians and loyalists must unite, although complaining how little the former has ever delivered for the latter. 'Unionists are in the castle. When they see us loyalists coming, they lift up the drawbridge. They'll say, 'You can stay out there and we'll look after you and we'll feed you and so on but you're not getting in here'.' That must change, especially since 'Britain would dump us in the morning': 'I want unionism to be united. The word loyalist is always followed by some derogatory word, and it shouldn't be like that. 'Somehow, we have to get unionism united and get genuine loyalists into a position where they can close that gap between unionism and loyalism. But we have to widen the gap between genuine loyalism and criminality. That's the key.' A united Ireland will not happen in his lifetime, he believes. But if it were ever to happen, he asks:' Where would the Orange Order go? Where would the 30,000 bandsmen go? Where would ex-loyalist prisoners go? 'Are we going to be like the Apaches or the Indians put away in a reservation somewhere?' asks McDonald, who has a good working relationship with senior republicans across Belfast, and elsewhere. Mary McAleese and her husband, Martin, struck up unlikely but an important friendship with UDA leader Jackie McDonald. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien During tense periods – and this weekend is one – a network of republican-loyalist contacts – largely unrecognised and unnoticed – defuse many volatile situations. Though he lost friends during the Troubles, he displays no bitterness. Recalling a conversation with former IRA prisoner Sean 'Spike' Murray, he noted how Murray said they 'probably would have tried to kill each other' in the past, but now they can even share car lifts. For a number of years, former loyalist and republican paramilitaries visited schools to talk about the real cost of the conflict, the coffins of fathers and sons carried, the pain, not the imagined past of heroic actions. 'We wanted to deromanticise paramilitarism. ''Do you want to go to prison?' we told them, 'Your life's ruined. When you come out your wife's divorced you and married somebody else and has children with somebody else.' I think we did a great job of deglamourising paramilitarism.' Today, McDonald keeps in touch with the McAleeses. 'Mary changed things for us,' he says. 'The politicians didn't want to know us. The police wanted to arrest us. She made it easier for politicians up here to talk to us. Mary played a vital role. She is a great woman.' McDonald has no notion of stepping down. 'It wouldn't matter what plans I had, people are telling me, 'You are not retiring.' I want to keep going as long as I can.'
