The Fragility of Peace and the Hope on Garvaghy Road

Source: Common Home TV

Common Home TV presents a deeply personal look at the communities and families affected by the recent upheaval caused by the renewed Garvaghy Road parade dispute.

Dermot Kelly, a husband and father Church youth worker, brings to light the need for continued peacemaking and healing in a region where quiet acceptance can still flare up into sectarian divides.

Dermot's wife, Áine, grew up on the Garvaghy Road. She was ten during the Drumcree standoffs of the mid-1990s, when soldiers and armoured vehicles stood outside her front door.

In the article, The Fragility of Peace and the Hope on Garvaghy Road, Dermot describes watching her live through those years again as tensions returned this autumn, after nearly three decades of quiet.

"Moving forward can never mean asking people to pretend they carry no scars," Dermot writes.

The article gives as much space to hope as to hurt. Dermot pays tribute to community workers, clergy and neighbours who have worked around the clock to keep people informed and calm, and to local young people who would not be drawn into violence. He was moved, he writes, by people from other faith traditions who got in touch simply to ask how his family was doing.

He calls on churches and civic society to treat peacebuilding as everyone's work, carried into ordinary places like the school gate, the shop and the pub, rather than leaving it to politicians and a handful of specialists.

In the accompanying video, Dermot reports from Portadown on what the dispute means for families and the wider community.

Read The Fragility of Peace and the Hope on Garvaghy Road:
www.commonhome.tv/2026/10/28/peacebuilding-northern-ireland/

Watch the accompanying video: www.commonhome.tv/feature/garvaghy-road-community/
and www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGfYICcfBqw&t=6s