Authority to create database of everybody buried in 285 cemeteries
The idea came from the County Cork National Monuments Committee, of which a number of county councillor are members.
They spoke at a meeting in County Hall yesterday about the importance of ensuring all such records were put on a central database.
Up to now records have been kept by council-appointed local registrars in ledgers.
Acting assistant county manager Declan Daly said in the case of cemeteries that were recently opened by the local authority, they were about to appoint a contractor to log all new burials on a computer system.
Cllr Derry Canty (FG) said this was very welcome, but added it was vital that records from older cemeteries were added to the computer.
“A lot of the registrars are old people and I’m concerned that when they die these books [ledgers] will be left in their attics,” he said.
“This is our history and our heritage and if we don’t act it will be lost to us.”
Cllr Dermot Sheehan (FG) said that during the summer he had inquiries from four visiting American families who were looking for information on their ancestors who had lived in West Cork.
“This is a very worthwhile proposal and it would help genealogy tourism in more outlying areas,” he said.
His party colleague Cllr Barbara Murray said that the LEADER group in East Cork was giving courses to the public on mapping graveyards and transcribing what was written on headstones. She said the council should perhaps tie into this and work with community-led projects.
Mr Daly said that a heritage committee in Skibbereen had complied records for 11 graveyards which could be used for a county-wide database.
Cllr Noel Costello (Lab) said such groups could take pictures of local registers and send them to the council where they could be uploaded onto a database.
The mayor of County Cork, Cllr Noel O’Connor, urged Mr Daly to consider this “to ensure the records were not lost”.
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