Dolla Graveyard Committee appeals for help in solving impasse over access to cemetery

A Tipperary graveyard committee has called on local TDs, councillors and Tipperary County Council to intervene in a long-running dispute over access to their burial ground.

The call comes from Dolla Graveyard Committee, to ensure that the local graveyard is registered with the Land Registry and unimpeded public access is secured in perpetuity.

The graveyard is located within the walls of the Kilboy estate and access is through a right of way, created since time immemorial, from the public road to the graveyard, according to the committee.

They pointed out in a statement last week that, in common with many other graveyards, for decades Dolla graveyard has been managed and tended to by a committee consisting of plot-holders and families of the bereaved.

However, they said, in 2016, the committee received correspondence from Kilboy estate stating that the estate owned the graveyard.

While the estate withdrew this letter within weeks, in 2018 it electrified the pedestrian gate and installed electrical infrastructure on the vehicular gate at the entrance to the graveyard, all controlled by the estate.

This is supplemented by at least two surveillance cameras which monitor all entrants to the graveyard.

“The Dolla graveyard committee objects to this high handed and intrusive actions on the part of the estate. The graveyard is a sacred site, where mourners and the bereaved should feel free to grieve in privacy and without requiring the permission of the Kilboy security apparatus to do so,” they said.

They pointed out that the graveyard was also public property owned by Tipperary County Council.

“How can it be permissible for a private landholder to seize control of the access to public lands; to decide who may or may not enter these lands ; at what times they may enter or must leave said lands and to video them as they do so?” they asked.

The committee said that Dolla graveyard was the ancestral burial ground for countless generations from the locality and continued as an active graveyard to this day.

Tipperary County Council said in a statement to the Tipperary Star said: “Tipperary County Council has been involved in engagement with the relevant stakeholders in relation to the future management of Kilboy burial ground. This engagement is ongoing, and, taking cognisance of same, Tipperary County Council has no further comment.”

At present, local publican Martin Ryan retains the key to the graveyard.

Kilboy Estate, which is owned by Shane Ryan, a son of Ryanair founder Tony Ryan, has said that it is seeking to balance the rights of local people with its security needs.

They said the CCTV cameras were placed in positions it saw as appropriate following a Garda review.

The said that Kilboy Estate “fully respects” the rights of those with family members buried in the graveyard to use the right of way and the gate, the operation of which remained a “matter of ongoing discussion”.