Visitors to a Cork cemetery ‘traumatised’ by the wet, moss-laden graves of loved ones

By Peter McCarthy, Corkman

There is no funding available to cut down overhanging trees that are causing lichen and moss to grow on graves in a council-operated Kinsale graveyard, which is leaving relatives “frustrated, stressed and very emotional,” a meeting of Bandon-Kinsale Municipal District (MD) heard this week.

Cllr Gillian Coughlan brought a motion before the MD meeting calling for a row of trees at St Eltin's Cemetery in Ardbrack to be cut back because they are growing over graves and causing gravestones and kerbs to turn green. “This is causing distress to many of the families who have loved ones resting there,” she said.

Cllr John Collins seconded the motion and said he had been contacted by a woman whose parents are buried in the graveyard. In a letter to the councillor she said that the trees are causing the graves to be constantly wet, encouraging the growth of moss and weeds. The woman said she was “literally brought to my knees in tears and desperation” on a recent visit to the grave on seeing the extent of the weed growth. “We are fighting a losing battle and visiting has become traumatic for a lot of us,” she said.

Cllr John Michael Foley, who is also a funeral director, said that trees “are dangerous in cemeteries in general across the board. They’re very high in Kinsale and they leave green lichen on headstones and kerbing and make the area very slippery. Roots of trees underground are a major problem when they're trying to dig graves as well, as we've encountered many, many times in different cemeteries.”

Cllr Foley said he wouldn’t recommend having trees in any cemetery. “They encroach underground into the graves, they also uplift foundations of kerbs and headstones so they’re dangerous every which way … if there was a bad storm and they were to fall in, the damage they would do to headstones would certainly add up to a fairly significant cost fairly quickly and of course there’s the health and safety issue,” he said.

Area Engineer James Donegan responded that Cork County Council spent €9,000 trimming the trees in St Eltin's Cemetery in November 2024 and removing them completely would now be the only option as the overhanging branches “are the only part of green that is on those trees.”

He said that with the cost of removing the 56 trees estimated at €15,000, “there's actually no funding in place for cutting down these trees in 2026.”

“But we'll look to see what finances are available. We might have to look at doing it over a number of years. We'll investigate to see what means there are of getting a budget because we well understand the issues that the trees create for the people that have graves along this area,” he said.

MD chair Cllr Marie O’Sullivan proposed that money collected from pay parking in Kinsale could be used to fund the tree cutting. Cllr Coughlan agreed, saying it would be “a really excellent, visible use” of the town’s parking dividend.