Headstone curb angers travellers

From next month, only those on a registered list of monument erectors will be allowed to install a headstone in a graveyard and their dimensions must first be submitted to the council for approval. Griffin said that the restrictions would also discourage "peer pressure" within the travelling community to erect ever-bigger monuments to deceased relatives.

"Before now we could take down a monument if it posed a safety risk, but there were no sanctions that we could take against people who didn't adhere with best practice," he said.

Martin Collins, a spokesman for Pavee Point, agreed that "peer pressure" to erect huge headstones is an issue of concern in the travelling community, but described the new bylaws as a "thinly disguised attack on traveller culture".

He said that travellers had been erecting such headstones for generations without members of the public being injured by falling monuments. "The health and safety argument is bullshit," he said. "Anti-traveller legislation is always dressed up as something else, and using health and safety as the pretext for these laws is cynical.

"While we have concerns that travellers often get into big debt - sometimes from money-lenders - to pay for big funerals and large headstones, it remains part of traveller culture."

Griffin insisted that the council would use the new bylaws "sensitively" and confirmed that the new height restrictions would apply to both council-owned graveyards and private or community cemeteries, including some used almost exclusively by travellers, such as Rathkeale cemetery.

"They [the bylaws] are not meant to antagonise the travelling community. It is not pleasant to approach someone recently bereaved to ask them to remove a headstone but cemeteries need to be regulated," he said. "Similar laws have been enacted in other counties, including Wicklow, Laois and Offaly."

Limerick county council removed a monument in Reilig Mhuire graveyard in Askeaton last year after deciding that it was unsafe. While permission had been granted a year earlier to erect a headstone, a Celtic cross was later added bringing its overall height to over 7ft.

The council decided to take the structure down after trying unsuccessfully to convince the family involved to remove it themselves.

Councillors in Cork also promised to introduce bylaws regulating headstone heights last year after a 15ft-wide by 20ft-high memorial was erected at Kilcully cemetery on the north side of the city. Joe O'Callaghan, a Fine Gael councillor, said he would favour legislation to regulate cemteries after the gravestone and multiple statues were constructed in memory of a deceased traveller. The man's family argued it was a work of art.

In Limerick, the new laws state that coffins must be buried at least 4ft below ground level and that monuments to the dead can only be made from stone, not ironwork. Words or symbols that "give rise to public offence" will also be banned in graveyards and the scattering of ashes is also forbidden.

The bylaws state "persons should conduct themselves in a decent, quiet and orderly manner" while in a cemetery, and they also ban dogs, video recording or the playing of musical instruments within a graveyard.

Griffin said the council is in talks with the Muslim community about accommodating their burial rituals. "The bylaws state that only wooden or metal coffins are allowed, but after consultation with the local Muslim community, we are investigating whether cloth coffins could be used," he said.

"We are currently in discussions with the HSE on the public-health implications."