Donegal County Council has been urged to fund a new municipal graveyard for Letterkenny.
As the diversity of the town widens, there is a growing urgency to the lack of graveyard space for people of all denominations and none.
Letterkenny’s two main Christian burial grounds at Conwal and Leck will be at capacity in an estimated eight years, Cllr Donal Coyle warned the council today.
Cllr Coyle said that the Catholic church has bought a plot in Leck, but with financial contributions down significantly since Covid, there is no finance to develop the land.
He called on the council to intervene and identify a suitable site for multi-denominational and nonreligious burial services.
He told the Letterkenny-Milford MD: “I believe now is the time for Donegal County to provide municipal burial grounds in the larger urban areas of the county, especially in Letterkenny, with the predicted growth of the town and with the diverse population now living in the Letterkenny area, there is an urgent need of burial space for non-Christian and non-congregants as well as the established denominations.”
Cllr Coyle highlighted an example of a local primary school class to show that the diversity of the town is changing. The class, he said, has 13 Catholic pupils and 15 non-Catholics, with the majority of those 15 pupils being from non-Christian denominations.
Cllr Jimmy Kavanagh, who raised the matter at a county council level in January, said the situation is an urgent problem and will get more urgent as time does by. He said that people of different faiths have had to bury loved ones in Derry and Dublin.
Arrangements are now being made by the council to schedule a workshop meeting to consider stakeholders’ concerns.
