'Ghoulish' House Plan for Cemetery Sparks Ire
by Michael Roddy
Thursday, June 27, 2002 9:13 a.m. EDT
DUBLIN (Reuters) - A plan to build houses in Ireland's most famous cemetery, the final resting place of some of the country's greatest patriots, political leaders and artists, has been shelved amid a storm of protest.
Dubbed "Ghoulish Terrace" by critics, the proposal by the 170-year-old Glasnevin Cemetery in north Dublin to build 11 luxury townhouses inside its walls was seen as infringing on the national heritage and an exercise in questionable taste.
The cemetery, which draws thousands of tourists every year, is the final resting place of Michael Collins, Eamon DeValera and Daniel O'Connell -- heroes of Ireland's struggle against British rule -- and writer Brendan Behan, among many others.
"It's really very sad to think they're building on top of graves," said Eva Hynes, who lives in century-old Prospect Square just outside the walls of the cemetery.
"From any point of view I don't think it should be allowed."
Critics, including residents and associations involved in preserving Ireland's heritage, said the townhouses would have been built on the graves of up to 1,000 victims of a smallpox epidemic and would intrude on consecrated ground.
George McCullough, chief executive officer of the Dublin Cemeteries Committee, which operates Glasnevin and four other cemeteries, rejected these claims but said the plan had been withdrawn for review.
"It's up in the air at the moment because of the objections and the attention in the media," he said Wednesday.
The plan could be resubmitted "when we have a look at it, and if we can satisfy the complaints of those who are complaining, and those of the planning authority," he said.
The proposed site in the cemetery contained 50 to 60 paupers' graves that would have been moved elsewhere. But it was not a mass grave site and was not consecrated ground, McCullough said.
He said the townhouses, which would have fetched 250,000 euros to 325,000 euros ($248,800 to $323,400) apiece in Dublin's booming housing market, were intended to help meet the deficit the 160-acre cemetery runs every year.
"We're a charity, a not-for-profit organization, and we don't receive any state subvention of any sort," he said.
But opponents of the plan said building in a cemetery that is a microcosm of Irish history, containing as it does the remains of patriots, writers, artists, politicians and victims of famine and cholera and typhoid epidemics which plagued the once-impoverished nation, was ill-conceived.
"I'd find it very hard to live there," said Maureen Higgins, 91, who has lived on Prospect Square since 1916, the year of the Easter Uprising against British rule.
