Marching orders

Former law society president and Chairman of the parades commission Tony Holland talks to Jonathan Ames about Ulster, marching and why he relishes one of the toughest jobs around

For someone so firmly in the firmament of the continuing conflicts in Northern Ireland, Tony Holland retains an almost unfeasibly relaxed and jovial demeanour.

As chairman of the Parades Commission in the province, he has one of those jobs in public life that few would relish - especially during the marching season, which reached its climax a few weeks ago at Drumcree.

Yet the 61-year-old solicitor from Plymouth appears to be enjoying every twist and turn of life in Ulster.

'It is a fantastic job,' he maintains.

'There is nothing about it that I dislike.'But then Mr Holland is no stranger to high-profile positions.

He was President of the Law Society in 1990-1991, before an offer came to take up the post of principal ombudsman at the Personal Investment Authority.

After the PIA post was scheduled for the chop following the creation of the Financial Services Authority Superombudsman, fate - in the form of headhunters - struck again and he was approached by the Northern Ireland office for the Parades Commission post.

'Initially, I thought I didn't have much to offer in Northern Ireland,' recalls Mr Holland.

'But the headhunters were very persuasive - they said it was the last big job that remained to be done in Northern Ireland, and convinced me that it was worth doing.'He was appointed to the two-year post in February in a bit of a rush, as there were rumours that the government was having difficulty finding someone of sufficient calibre to replace the first chairman, Sir Alistair Graham.

The job is meant to be part time, but immediately preceding and during the marching season - roughly from April to August - it becomes almost a full-time responsibility.There are 3,600 applications for authorisation to parade every year in Northern Ireland, but the commission only looks at the 10% or so that qualify as being contentious.

And of those approximately 350 contentious applications, about 150 involve Drumcree.

Although Mr Holland is full of praise for his predecessor and the previous commission - all of whom have now been replaced - he says bluntly that he has an entirely different approach to the task of making binding decisions on marches in Ulster.

'We could just go on, as I imagine some people would prefer that we did, saying either yes or no to each application which we have to consider.

That's fine, but if you do that you've created a form of a court which just goes about its business every day.

'I maintain that part of our brief must be to try and arrive at a situation where there are fewer and fewer contentious parades, and to provide some kind of structured route map as to how to avoid contentious parades.

Therefore we don't just sit as some kind of quasi-judicial body making judicial decisions, but we actually try to be positive and pro-active.

It's a difficult route to go down.'Indeed, Mr Holland maintains that his background as a lawyer and his Law Society experience have proved invaluable in assisting him in the navigation of that tricky path.

'My experiences at the Society were particularly helpful - as both President and as chairman of various committees where you have to chair a bunch of fairly independent-minded people and shepherd them to a conclusion.

I was also one of the first solicitors to receive media training from the Law Society and that training made the Northern Ireland situation much easier.'Mr Holland suggests that being aware of legal pitfalls is going to be even more important with the advent of the Human Rights Act in October.

He points out that articles 8, 9 and 10 of the European Convention cover the right to parade, although they do not provide for an absolute right.

'Article 6 is also relevant because we are possibly determining people's civil rights.

And article 6 says people are entitled to a fair and public hearing in relation to determining their civil rights.

At the moment, we never have hearings.

There isn't a strict definition of the term "hearing" for the purposes of the act.'That lack of clarity will undoubtedly lead to a challenge under the act, predicts Mr Holland.

But it will be a welcome challenge in his view.

'It is inevitable because the feelings are very high.

And it is right that it should happen because if we are getting it wrong then we need to be corrected, and if we are getting it right it would be reassuring to know that we are.'