Grave row over 10ft high €60,000 memorial

AN unholy row has broken out over the erection of a huge headstone in Kilmallock cemetery by a Traveller family.

Locals claim the 10ft high marble and granite structure, estimated to have cost more than €60,000, was erected in the dark of night.

A deputation of people, who have relatives buried in the graveyard, complained to the local area meeting of Limerick County Council when it met in Kilmallock last week.

The council has contacted the family who erected the memorial. A spokesman for the council said: “The matter is in the hands of our solicitor.”

The structure was erected in memory of Timmy O’Reilly, whose family live in a local halting site. It is more than ten feet high and features statues of angels, an archway and inscriptions on tablets of stone.

The O’Reilly family was at the centre of another graveyard row, in May 2005, when there was a dispute over where a young mother should be buried.

The O’Reillys wanted Kathleen McCarthy O’Reilly buried in Kilmallock, but Mrs O’Reilly’s family, the McCarthy’s opposed this and the matter went to the High Court.

The funeral of the 22-year-old mother-of-two went ahead at Kilcornan in West Limerick where she was buried alongside her grandparents.

The McCarthy family waked Kathleen in Cork and the O’Reillys waked her the following day in Shanagolden.

More than 300 members of the extended McCarthy family attended the burial, which was not attended by the O’Reillys.

The woman’s husband, Timothy, died tragically last September and is buried in Kilmallock.

The council spokesman said the head stone contravenes council rules, which stipulate that headstones should not be more than four and half feet high.

“Celtic Crosses of up to seven feet in height are permitted,” he added.

A number of families who have plots near the memorial claim it intrudes on their family graves.

The council is investigating whether the memorial goes outside the O’Reilly family plot.