We are told this will not be an Orange march. No orange regalia will be on display, which is a pity as Dubliners will be deprived of an opportunity to see, firsthand, the bigotry that underpins the average Orange day out.

I have witnessed Orange intolerance and thuggery at Drumcree. I have seen the repugnant anti-Irish sentiment at the eve of 12 July bonfires in east Belfast.

The unionists involved would be the first to respond if others organised bonfires draped with Union Jacks and topped with pictures of their monarch. But to burn the tricolour and images of the pope is excused as being part of their cultural identity.

The Orange Order as an organisation never murdered anybody. It was never in the same league as the Provisional IRA. But it has done . . . and continues to do . . .

serious damage to community relations in the North. It obsesses about its 'right' to march in areas where it is not wanted. Exercising these rights remains more important than helping to reconcile the two communities. In truth, any group or community that needs several thousand parades a year to celebrate a military and religious victory back in 1690 is sorely in need of serious introspection.

I take a view that bans of any kind should be limited.

So, in the spirit of tolerance, let William Frazer and his colleagues have their march.

But if we welcome them, they first have to stop slandering us. Protestants do not enjoy a monopoly on victimhood, a myth Frazer has peddled in recent weeks.

"The parade will take a strong victims' voice to the heart of Dublin where, for perhaps the first time, the people of the Irish Republic will be shown the real cost of Republican terrorism, a terrorism carried out in their name. Victims will be asking the people and politicians of the Republic to face up to the legacy of terrorism carried out by those who claimed to be acting in their name, in support of their constitution and in effect a united Ireland."

If the purpose of this march is to smear the good name of this state and its people, then Frazer and his colleagues should stay on their side of the border. They need to be told that neither the Irish state nor its people authorized the actions of the IRA. We hold no guilt for the IRA's murder campaign.

Frazer would do well to change the route of his parade to include Talbot Street in central Dublin.

There he'll find a monument to those murdered by loyalists on 17 May 1974. On that day, in Dublin and Monaghan, 33 people were killed and 240 were injured when four car bombs exploded almost simultaneously.

He would also do well to put pressure on his government in London to cooperate with an official investigation into the circumstances of those attacks. And, if he took the time to pray for the loved ones of the murdered on 17 May 1974, he might ask why the Northern Ireland Office, the RUC and the Northern Ireland Forensic Service refused to cooperate with the victims' inquests.

The Belfast Agreement provides the space for all the peoples on this island to live side-by-side in peace. But there are those from the two traditions in the North who won't let go of the past.

Nevertheless, later this month we should have the maturity to stop and stare as this merry band of dinosaurs makes its way through O'Connell Street towards our sovereign parliament.

Let these British subjects have their day out in our modern state. We are not perfect down here but at least we do not suffer from the political bankruptcy and intellectual insecurity of contemporary unionism in Northern Ireland.