Adam Street bonfire: Belfast Council calls for 'interventions' from three Stormont departments at Tiger's Bay site after Sinn Fein push
Belfast Council is calling for “interventions” from three Stormont departments at the site of a Tiger’s Bay loyalist bonfire, following a Sinn Fein push at a behind-closed-doors meeting.
The bonfire area, located close to a north Belfast interface zone bordering with republican-dominated New Lodge, has been earmarked for redevelopment as social housing following years of tension.
Near the end of April, the site came up at a meeting of a city council committee that the public and press were barred from attending.
According to a report on the meeting, which only provides the outcome of votes and doesn’t detail what politicians actually said, the council is now to write to Stormont’s departments for communities, infrastructure and finance about redeveloping the bonfire site, in which officials will “highlight the interventions that are required”.
The move was suggested by two Sinn Fein councillors, Tomas O Neill and Ryan Murphy, who both represent the Oldpark district.
Currently, Stormont’s communities brief is held by the DUP, while infrastructure and finance are both Sinn Fein ministries.
If any of the departments do act on the Adam Street site, it won’t be the first time senior Stormont politicians have sought to intervene on the relatively small bonfire.
In 2021, two nationalist ministers failed in a legal bid to stop it. The SDLP’s then-infrastructure minister Nichola Mallon and Sinn Fein’s then-communities minister Deirdre Hargey jointly wanted to force the police to remove the bonfire, only for a judge to throw the case out.
The Department for Infrastructure later denied it had squandered public money on the failed case, blaming the bonfire’s builders for a £60,000 legal bill.
The same year saw Sinn Fein call for the relatively small bonfire to be relocated, sparking a loyalist group to accuse nationalists of placing Tigers Bay “under siege from the pan-nationalist front” while stating the community had come under physical violence alongside attacks on loyalist culture.
In July 2022, there were reports of petrol bombs thrown close to the bonfire. In April 2024, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive appointed a housing association to run what it described as a “residential-led regeneration scheme” on the site.