City centre bonfire site condemned

Plans to build an ‘eleventh night’ bonfire on a site adjacent to the Holiday Inn Belfast City Centre have been condemned by local politicians, who have warned that tourism may suffer as a result.

The site of the bonfire is on land owned by the Housing Executive close to the hotel on Hope Street which was refurbished last year at a cost of £2.5m.

But the SDLP’s Carmel Hanna labelled the plan as “utterly insane” at a time when efforts were ongoing to boost the city’s tourist potential:

“The last thing that visitors staying in any hotel want to do is look out on such a mess,” she said recently.

Although the Housing Executive has said that it will continue to work with bodies such as the PSNI, the Fire Service and Belfast City Council, it has confirmed that it does not have any plans to re-locate the bonfire.

“Bonfires are traditional events and we work with and support communities to embrace cultural celebrations in a way that is non-threatening,” said a spokesperson.

But Carmel Hanna said that the authorities were content to “walk on eggshells” around these issues instead of adopting “a common sense approach”:

“I am not calling for bonfires to be banned,” she added. “I understand that people are attached to them, but those who build them just shouldn’t be ale to do so wherever they choose.

“A bonfire right beside a city centre hotel is not a good idea. Guests looking out their windows won’t see a cultural celebration, to them, it will just appear to be a pile of rubbish.”

And Michael Long of Alliance agreed that a bonfire in such close proximity to a hotel was likely to disrupt tourism:

“We are currently working to attract more jobs into the area and this won’t help,” he added. “But the bigger issue is that in a number of locations across Belfast, statutory agencies, including the Housing Executive, the council and the police, seem unwilling to stand up for the rights of local residents and businesses. It would appear that those behind the bonfires can do whatever they like.”

Alliance has called for a “much more robust approach” to be adopted to bonfire management.