Oldest headstone at Kilquane dates back to 1700
DRINKING parties in a county Clare village cemetery are causing outrage among local people, who denounce the intruders as “desecrating a holy place.”
The residents of Parteen are so disgusted with the nocturnal goings-on in the cemetery of Kilquane on the banks of the Shannon, which contains a church going back to the sixth century,
that they have taken the issue to local Labour councillor, Pascal Fitzgerald, who said:
“This trend shows just where we have gone in the country and the lack of respect some people have for certain things – the local people have expressed their shock at what they saw in the cemetery, and I’ve looked into the matter and found that young people were gathering there for drinking parties at night, which is very undesirable behaviour and they’ve not been shy about leaving evidence of bottles and cans behind, which I’ve removed.
“This sacred ground is not a place of this type of anti-social activity, it’s an insult to the people buried there and to their families,” he said..
Referring to the active Kilquane cemetery working group, the councillor added they have gone to a lot of trouble repairing graves and tidying the cemetery, and that it is highly disrespectful to their good work that it is being used for drinking parties.
The well known local author, Donal O’Riain, a member of the cemetery working group, commented: “We’ve had trouble down the years with headstones being vandalised, but this new behaviour is a disgrace.
“The oldest headstones in the cemetery date back to 1700, and local families have ancestors buried there. This is no place for drinking parties and it must be condemned out of hand”.
Cllr Fitzgerald is organising community surveillance of the cemetery.
“We are determined to put a stop to this,” he concluded.
