Garvaghy residents at Laytown meeting
``What can we do?'' asked a distressed listener after hearing the
account of abuse and harassment experienced by the ordinary
residents on the Garvaghy Road.
150 people attended a public meeting, organised by Kevin Barry
Cumann, Sinn Féin, in Laytown last Thursday about the situation
on Portadown's Garvaghy Road.
Breandan Mac Cionnaith, Independent Councillor, asked everyone to
write to the Taoiseach and to the Prime Minister, requesting them
to uphold the rights of residents and to be allowed to live and
rear their families in equality and peace.
Joanna Tennyson and Aidan McCormack gave a graphic description of
the everyday problems, harassment and intimidation of the people
in the estate and of their great fear at the imminent prospect of
a rerun of previous years' brutality.
``The march is not a 15 minute walk by Orangmen through our
estate. There is a saturation by RUC and army for days prior to
the march. People saw, on television last year, how we were
beaten off our own street, how 6,000 residents were prevented by
going to church to attend mass, on the pretext of letting
Orangemen march up to their church''. The attendance were shocked
to hear the ``reality of life'' in the besieged nationalist
enclave, how they cannot go in safety into their own town, and
how ten people have been killed in the town centre in recent
years.
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