£3.7m bill for bonfire callouts
FIRE crew callouts to bonfire sites in the lead-up to July 11 cost taxpayers £3.7 million over the last five years, it has been revealed.
The cost came to light through an Assembly Question submitted by SDLP South Antrim MLA Thomas Burns.
It also emerged fire crews had been called out 1,352 times in the five-year period.
Mr Burns, who has described the cost as “ridiculous”, said the latest figures available - for 2009 - show that fire crews had to attend 288 incidents at a cost of 894,076 in May, June and July.
He said: “I recognise that great strides are being made in certain areas to better organise bonfires and the people involved in these initiatives are to be commended for their efforts.
“However, callouts to bonfires on the Eleventh Night are not the problem, it is the anti-social elements that are hanging around bonfire sites in the weeks and months leading up to the Twelfth that are causing all the trouble.”
Mr Burns added: “Youths sit around on old sofas drinking, lighting small fires, setting fire to rival bonfires and generally causing bother into the early hours of the morning.
“This has nothing to do with the Orange culture or tradition, it is simply anti-social behaviour of the worst kind and it is costing us a fortune to deal with it.”
Mr Burns called for the PSNI to do more to “rid communities of this nuisance element which blights neighbourhoods”.
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Friday 25 May 2012
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