A controversial 4.5m-high memorial in Sligo Cemetery in the West of Ireland 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 Willy 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.
“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.
“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 who did it, I thank them for it, for my son. All over the world, some Travellers supported that. This is my first time to see it,” he said.
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 to 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.”
Top of page picture: The memorial in its original state before being taken down by the Council.