SAOIRSE32

Irish News
**Via Newshound
By Allison Morris
26/04/08

Loyalists may be offered ratepayer-funded cash rewards for not burning the Irish tricolour on Eleventh Night bonfires.

Breach: A bonfire site in the Village area of south Belfast where collection of materials for the pyre has already begun, well ahead of the July 1 start date specified in the guidelines for organisers wishing to benefit from Belfast City Council’s sponsorship scheme. PICTURE: Mal McCann

For four years Belfast City Council has sponsored 14 bonfire sites across the city to reduce the sectarian element and environmental im-pact of the long-standing loyalist tradition.

Cash awards are given to communities that meet guidelines laid down in a council charter with a view to turn-ing the July bonfire tradition into a more “cultural family-orientated event”.

Criteria to achieve the cash incentives include:

–not collecting material until a designated date

–agreeing not to burn highly toxic tyres

–removal of paramilitary displays and ‘shows of strength’.

However, a council-commissioned report, conducted by the Institute for Conflict Re-search and seen by The Irish News, has suggested that guidelines should include a new incentive to discourage communities from burning the Irish tricolour.

“The burning of the tricolour continues to be a consistent theme at the majority of sites,” the report notes.

“Discussions need to begin about the potential for limiting this aspect to the bonfire celebration.

“For future bonfire management programmes it may be appropriate to include an in-dicator that refers to the burning of tricolours within the evaluation.”

The report found that several of the sponsored sites continued to flout the guidelines four years into the controversial scheme.

In 2005 there were calls for funding to the Pitt Park bonfire at Inverary playing fields in east Belfast to be withdrawn after a UVF ‘show of strength’ in which a volley of shots was fired.

The latest report shows that last year Pitt Park was one of three sites whose organisers breached guidelines by allowing wood to be collected before July 1.

The two other sites were in south Belfast – at Taughmonagh and Finaghy.

The report notes that discouraging communities from collecting material too early was still “the most problematic element” of the scheme.

It says most communities feel the July 1 start date has been imposed upon them without prior consultation.

Loyalist bonfires costs hundreds of thousands of pounds to police and clean up every year. It has been estimated that about 500,000 tyres are burned in Northern Ireland during the annual July bonfires, causing widespread environmental damage.

Over the past year several sites traditionally used for loyalist bonfires have been sold off for development, in-cluding the site at the lower Shankill which was in the past one of the largest bonfires in Belfast.