WHEN first piloted back in 2005 council bonfire management schemes were controversial, with nationalist ratepayers outraged that public money was to be paid to those organising the pyres.
Loyalists on the other hand welcomed schemes that dished out grants for street parties and associated events.
The pilot project got off to a shaky start, with masked men firing shots at a council-funded bonfire in east Belfast.
However, in the years that followed a reduction in tyres and offensive symbols being burned at council-managed sites prompted supporters of the scheme to hail it a success.
Thirteen now seems to be the unlucky number and rather than nationalist objections it is loyalist suspicions that will ultimately signal the end to awarding of grants for fun days in the vicinity of Eleventh Night fires.
The objection to bonfire management schemes has been gradual.
For some loyalists the schemes were increasingly seen as an 'attack' on cultural expression.
In 2016 The Irish News reported that loyalists in Ards and North Down had threatened to take the council to court to challenge attempts to link festival funding to bonfire conditions.
That refusal to sign up to updated schemes, which would require a named person or persons to accept responsibility for what are technically illegal structures, has now been replicated across Northern Ireland.
Other groups and areas have either publicly or privately refused to sign up to conditions or have simply stopped applying for the council grants.
Injunctions last year on what are perceived to be UVF-linked bonfires in east Belfast has further hardened that stance.
In the past such a direct action against a section of loyalism would have resulted in predictable violence and street disorder, but loyalists kept the area calm while using the court action as further 'evidence' of a plan to eradicate the annual fires altogether.
In recent weeks a mid-Shankill bonfire group, Mid-Ulster groups, bonfire groups in east Belfast and now loyalists in the West Winds estate in Newtownards have all stepped away from the funding schemes.
Loyalists are now saying they will self-regulate in future, with the promise of funding for bouncy castles and burgers no longer considered enough carrot for such a big stick.
