Stormont department pins blame for £60,000 legal bill on Adam Street bonfire builders in Tiger’s Bay, north Belfast

By The Newsroom
Published 22nd Jul 2022, 11:32 BST
Updated 22nd Jul 2022, 12:36 BST
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A Stormont department has blamed a legal bill of almost £60,000 on loyalist bonfire builders.

The Department for Infrastructure and Department for Communities stand accused of squandering taxpayers’ money in a failed legal bid to clear an Eleventh Night bonfire in Tiger’s Bay last summer.

A spokesperson for the Department for Infrastructure denied that they squandered public money.

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“The people who built the bonfire, and who put the safety of people, property and the environment at risk, are responsible for the waste of public money.”

File photo dated 06/07/21 of a controversial loyalist bonfire built at the interface in north Belfast dividing loyalist Tiger's Bay and nationalist New Lodge.File photo dated 06/07/21 of a controversial loyalist bonfire built at the interface in north Belfast dividing loyalist Tiger's Bay and nationalist New Lodge.
File photo dated 06/07/21 of a controversial loyalist bonfire built at the interface in north Belfast dividing loyalist Tiger's Bay and nationalist New Lodge.

The department spokesperson continued: “The department is satisfied that it took appropriate action to try to prevent the destruction of land, which is in public ownership, and to protect the wider public interest against threats of violence, damage to property and risk to public safety.

“This was not a legal attempt to suppress unionist culture. This bonfire is not appropriate at this interface location.

“Local residents have the right to live free from attacks on their homes and free from intimidation and anti-social behaviour.”

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The department had a duty to do everything in its power to try to have the bonfire removed including the use of legal action, they added.

The legal action centred on trying to force the PSNI to protect contractors drafted in to move the bonfire.

The bonfire was on a patch of abandoned land called Adam Street.

The High Court ruled last year that the bonfire was used by “some members of the PUL to intimidate and terrorise those residents in the adjacent properties in the New Lodge area” more – details at this link

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The expenditure was revealed in an answer to an Assembly question by North Belfast DUP MLA Phillip Brett who described the court case as an attempt to “suppress unionist culture”.

For more from the News Letter, click here:

Cleric rejects Dee Stitt’s suggestion that UDA/UFF part of ‘Protestant culture’ as Jamie Bryson announces north Down loyalist is ‘a client’

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