Gravestones damaged in Castlerea cemetery by storm still not repaired

Gravestones in a council owned cemetery have yet to be repaired due to a paperwork issue.

At a recent meeting of the Roscommon Municipal District, MD chairman Cllr Paschal Fitzmaurice said an issue involving St Joseph’s Cemetery in Castlerea had been raised with him repeatedly.

“During the February storm a number of trees fell in the graveyard, and something in the region of 12 headstones were knocked,” he said.

He added that in some cases the deceased had no living family, while others had relatives who were very elderly.

He praised the “enormous work” done by the chairperson of St Joseph’s Cemetery Committee, getting all the names of the gravestones affected. He also got a costing for repairing those from a local stonemason.

“It wasn’t a huge amount of money,” he said, adding that the intention was to submit this to the council’s insurer.

“The insurer came back to say that the claim had to be made individually. Some of these people have no living family members, some of them are in their 80s. One of them is almost 90 and he is asking me what is going on,” he said.

He asked that this issue could “somehow be worked out” and called for a common-sense approach.

“It is very distressing for people. The headstones were knocked by trees in a council graveyard,” the Castlerea man said. He added that he had photographs of the damage.

“Some of these people have no one belonging to them at all, so do we just abandon them?” 

MD co-ordinator Tom McDermot said that the issue was going on all over the county and suggested that it might have to be brought up at the monthly plenary meeting. 

The meeting heard that some gravestones had been knocked by the unprecedented wind of Storm Éowyn.