Campaign Mounted Against Birr Cemetery Rules
Thursday, 23 February 2012
A petition to change the rules in the new section of Birr's Clongohill Cemetery has been mounted by a mother who lost her four-year-old daughter in a tragic accident last year.
Louise O'Brien, mother of Maria McInerney, who died after she fell while playing on a tractor at her grandfather's farm near Tullamore last August, wants the rules relating to the installation of kerbing alongside gravesides relaxed.
However, Birr Town Council, who last year passed a bylaw restricting the erection of kerbing in the new section of the cemetery, say they will not back down and the rules will not be changed.
In Birr's Clongohill Cemetery rules dictate that the cemetery must remain a 'lawn cemetery,' where strict guidelines regarding the dimensions of monuments marking a grave are enforced. In the older section of the cemetery, which is divided from the new section by the Birr to Clareen road, families are permitted to erect more elaborate memorials and furnish graves with decorative kerbing.
'We don't have any family in the graveyard and were unaware of any bylaws and when Maria died we asked to be notified about them,' Louise O'Brien told the Tribune.
'Many families would like to put up kerbing but the Council say it will never be allowed. I've been talking to some councillors about it and they say they see it from a maintenance point of view and don't look at it from an emotional perspective.
'I really feel this is the last thing we will ever be able to do for Maria. We were always taught never to even step on a person's grave and I hate the idea of lawnmowers driving over Maria's grave,' an emotional Louise said.
'Changing the rules in the cemetery isn't going to happen,' Councillor Michael Campbell (FG) told the Tribune.
'The laws are clearly explained on the wall in the graveyard for everyone who wants to buy a site to see. There are to be no kerbs and nothing is allowed to be sown in the soil, but potted plants are ok. This is to ensure that maintenance and keeping the graveyard in perfect order is made easy.
'There were some families who didn't observe the rules fully, but they will eventually have to. There are the graves of 50 to 60 people in the graveyard and none of them have any problem obeying the rules. We passed these bylaws as a Council and they won't be changed,' Cllr. Campbell said.
However, such an adamant response has not dissuaded Louise, who is determined to garner enough support for her campaign to force the Council to rethink the rules.
'We will stop the petition when we feel we have enough names to make the difference,' Louise says. 'The next step is to start calling door-to-door at people's homes and I also plan to contact some of the local priests to ask if a petition can be placed at the Church gates.
'Some of the petitions have actually gone missing from several shops and when I called in to collect them they weren't able to find them for me. But, when we have enough support I plan to bring the petition to the Council and if they won't listen the I'll take the campaign to the media.
'I believe that everyone should have the right to commemorate their loved ones in a way they see fit without intruding on anyone else. I don't want to offend anyone who doesn't feel the same as I do, but I really feel this is the last thing I can do for Maria,' Louise told the Tribune.
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