Controversial Sligo Cemetery memorial dismantled overnight

A controversial 4.5m-high memorial in Sligo Cemetery has been removed.

Three white marble statues of the Holy Family, St Michael and St Gabriel and the supporting plinth were dismantled at the grave of the late Willie McGinley overnight on Friday.

The top of the 23-year-old’s headstone was also damaged in the operation to remove the surrounding memorial.

Sligo County Council has been contacted for comment. It is believed gardaí maintained a presence at the cemetery during the removal works. The local authority is currently investigating how the monument was erected two weeks ago without full planning permission.

The 2009 cemetery bylaws state that a headstone on a triple plot shall not be greater in height than 1.53m (5ft) above ground level. The McGinley monument stood at approximately 4.5m above ground level.

One industry insider estimated the entire memorial would have cost between €180,000 and €230,000, with the statues alone costing approximately €90,000.

Cllr Arthur Gibbons said on Friday that it was “only right” that the memorial had been removed.

“At the end of the day there’s planning permission required in the cemetery to keep everything at a normal reality. If you put something like that in there, it was nearly making a god out of one [person] and everybody else has to abide by the planning laws,” the Sinn Féin councillor said.

“It’s not fair on other families who were restricted by the guidelines. That was a blatant abuse in reality. It was an expensive abuse. It’s been taken down and rightly so and that’s no disrespect to the person that’s in the grave. Those who put it up, they thought they were above the planning laws of the land, they’re not.

“My sympathies go to the family but at the end of the day, the people who put up that monument would have been people who specialise in those headstones – they know the guidelines.

“All of those monumental sculpture workers know what the guidelines are in every cemetery. I feel sorry for the family. They must be feeling very sore in relation to it. But the law is there for everybody and only rightly so.”

“Everybody that’s under the soil there are equal. It’s as simple as that,” he added.

Speaking on the second anniversary of his son’s death last Sunday, Teague McGinley denied either organising or funding the memorial. He claimed it had been his son’s wish to have a “big high headstone” and that relatives from all over the world came together to fund it.

“Family from England, Ireland, Scotland, Dublin, some of them from America, put up the funds for this to put it up. It wasn’t us. I didn’t even know this went up. This is a surprise to everybody. To everyone that done it, I thank them for it, for my son. All over the world, there’s Travellers that supported that. This is my first time to see it,” he said.

[ ‘A surprise to everybody’: Family denies organising 4.5m-high memorial in Sligo CemeteryOpens in new window ]

One early morning cemetery-goer on Friday said he approved of its removal.

“I buried my wife a few years ago and I wasn’t allowed put up a big headstone either so why should they be allowed this? I reckon it’s only right for them to take it down. Look at the rest of them here … all level ground. We couldn’t afford that either,” he said.

Another man said there would be “a lot of mixed views” about the latest development. “It’s still a man’s grave.”