Portadown

Trolley weights.

And it was almost unnoticed because we were so busy squabbling about a parade in Portadown.

And unfortunately, that is the case in Northern Ireland.

We become so distracted by other things that these things become normalised.

But this march is associated with one of the darkest periods in our history.

It's associated with 21 deaths.

We were witnessing violence and destruction, the like of which we had never seen before, because this march was pushed down a Catholic, this Orange March was pushed down a Catholic road in Portadown.

But why was this

And each card would simply say, they would have a simple message saying to Rosemary.

And it's important to remember Rosemary because we've recently had in Northern Ireland, Rosemary Nelson was a human rights solicitor who represented the residents of the Gavahi Road in Portadown, County Armagh during the 1990s, supporting their campaign against the Orange Order parades that went along the mainly nationalist road.

And at that time, Rosemary faced threats and intimidation because of her work.

And as we know, she was murdered for the work she was doing.

The modern version of that now involves the PSNI and Pather Tobin.

Yes, so the PSNI interview with Padraig Tobin over his presence at the Garvahy Road protest in Portadown, that's been postponed because he asked for the interview to be conducted through the Irish language.

The interview was meant to be under caution on Friday in Belfast, but because of his ask that it is held in Irish...

Mr. Tobias said the interview is being rearranged for a later time when an Irish-speaking interview team is available.

And I think we in the Republic and in the wider world, and I know our colleagues from Ukraine have been on Belfast, which is very helpful, could learn a lot from the experiences.

Because I was like Dara on that Sunday morning in the pouring rain in Portadown.

It was very depressing.

But I found the next few weeks sitting watching Darren and his colleagues work their behinds off very affirming of the importance of the rule of law and of human rights.

I suppose for all of political unionism, they believe that the Northern state is a unionist state and that it's intolerable that a Republican and a Nationalist is First Minister.

And as the election draws closer, the O'Neill Moscow posters that are already on lampposts in Portadown will increase as unionist efforts escalate to maximise the pro-union vote.

Into this context, one interesting development last week was a decision by the Ulster Unionist Party to initiate a six day social media campaign to defend the union with Britain.

I presume they worked for the first six days and then rested on the seventh day.