Locals demand drainage money for Killererin cemetery – as water levels threaten burials

A Galway community fear their loved one will be buried in watery graves – as efforts to secure funding to release water from a local cemetery have hit a brick wall.

Already one man from the locality could not be buried in the family plot in Killererin Cemetery – because when the grave was dug, it half filled with water and had to be closed in.

Yet impassioned pleas for funding to carry out basic drainage on the perimeter of the graveyard – not even in the cemetery itself – have fallen on deaf ears.

Even a suggestion that the funding required be diverted from Galway County Council’s roads allocation was rejected on the basis that this was for a specific purpose.

However, Cllr Pete Roche said that for ‘small money’, the waters that come into what is known locally as the new graveyard during heavy rainfall could be diverted in advance of this happening.

The cemetery was developed around the mid-1960s but because of its location beside much higher ground, it is subjected to a run-off of water during particularly wet periods.

Some locals in the parish who have purchased plots from Galway County Council have discovered to their horror that they are liable to flooding when it came to burying their loved ones.

“Some of the roads allocation will invariably go towards drainage along certain stretches but any project that releases water, regardless where it is, deserves funding to resolve the matter – whether it’s along a road or at a graveyard,” he said.

“Galway County Council have refused to release any portion of their roads budget despite the resolving of this situation amounting to relatively small money.

“It can be done without going into the cemetery at all and local landowners are willing to facilitate such a project.

“I have raised the matter with the environmental section of Galway County Council and while they accept there is a problem, there is still no funding forthcoming.

“The bottom line is that locals have told me that they don’t want their loved ones buried in watery graves,” a visibly annoyed Cllr Roche told The Connacht Tribune.

The matter also came before a meeting of Tuam Municipal Council and which it was confirmed that there was no money available to eradicate the flooding situation . . . and the heartache for families who have plots there.

At that meeting Cllr Roche requested a portion of the €40,000 roads allocation for the Tuam area but he was emphatically informed by Director of Services Derek Pender that this was not an option as this funding was for a specific purpose and even a small portion could not be diverted.

The Fine Gael councillor made a request that the Director and local authority engineers come up with a funding stream for this project.