Sinn Fein has launched an attack on the Parades Commission in Northern Ireland.

The attack came in the party's submission to the review of the commission ordered by the government.

The role of the commission is to determine if contentious parades in Northern Ireland can go ahead.

The submission was handed in at Stormont by Sinn Fein assembly members Gerry Kelly and Michelle Gildernew.

Sinn Fein said the commission had lost the confidence of a large section of the community for being composed of too many people with connections to the RUC and unionist community.

The party said it was an urgent priority for the government to appoint a new commission that was broadly representative of the community and was "clearly independent of political and sectional interference".

It proposed also that a new commission should include some people drawn from nationalist working class areas and who were sympathetic to republican politics.

It also stated that the current commission had "palpably failed to resolve the parades issue".

The party said that decisions had led in recent times to a deepening of community tensions.

The Parades Commission has been at the centre of controversy since its establishment following the election of the Labour government in May 1997.