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Orange Order Grand Master Edward Stevenson: Funding stories insinuate wrongdoing

Orange Grand Master Edward Stevenson after his election at Ballykelly Orange Hall in January 2011
Orange Grand Master Edward Stevenson after his election at Ballykelly Orange Hall in January 2011 Orange Grand Master Edward Stevenson after his election at Ballykelly Orange Hall in January 2011

THERE has been much recent attention by your newspaper on the successful list of recipients of the Community Halls Scheme, administered by the Department for Communities.

The nature of these stories has been to report the facts in such a way which insinuates that there is something unusual about the Orange community applying for funding or worse, that there is wrong doing on behalf of the applicants.

We are a province-wide community organisation with a large number of halls, many of which have had no previous funding. As such, it is entirely to be expected that our groups should be represented in both the amount of applications made and the awards secured.

The Orange Institution does not set the criteria for funding programmes provided by the Government. Those halls which received funding obviously clearly met the requirements of this scheme. Many others were unsuccessful and only a small proportion of our total hall network will benefit from this initiative.

Orange halls provide a home for many activities throughout Northern Ireland and especially in isolated, remote rural communities where often no similar provision exists. Activities include musical tuition, dance, IT classes, first aid training, praise services, flower arranging and a range of indoor sports.

Among the 89 successful applicants for this scheme are a wide and varied number of community groups. These include the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, Protestant and Catholic Churches, Young Farmers, the Loyal Orders and associated cultural groups.

There appears to have been no similar degree of scrutiny of these other successful applicant groups which raises the question, why should Orange halls alone, now find themselves being highlighted by the Irish News?

On Tuesday 31 January, the paper carried a front page headline highlighting the fact that constituted community organisations who have long term leases on some of our Orange halls had benefited from the scheme.

As an organisation with over 750 halls throughout Ireland the subleasing of premises to active community groups is not unusual and in many cases helps ensure the premises are better utilised and maintained than if it were solely for the use of an Orange lodge.

Our halls and the community activities they facilitate have been maintained despite a targeted, sustained, and sectarian campaign of violence, waged by republicans on Orange property. Indeed, since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, there have been approximately 500 attacks on our halls. Over 30 have been destroyed. Two Orange Halls have already been targeted in 2017.

The recent highlighting of halls which are committed to improving their facilities could be seen as providing a road map for those who wish to continue these attacks against the Orange community.

One of these properties has been regularly targeted in the past. As a result I intend to speak to senior PSNI officers to advise them of our concerns regarding these stories and the potential of an increased level of attacks on our halls.

The degree of attention devoted to singularly highlighting these funding successes by our members, by creating hype around the fact that a 94-year-old Orange hall isn’t on the postal register and now, highlighting the entirely legal and logical relationship between the owners of some properties and the groups who regularly use them raises a number of issues.

The Orange Institution, like wider society supports a free press - but we also expect a fair press in return.

::  Edward Stevenson, Grand Master of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland