Our way with death is part of what we Irish are. Whether the deceased’s time has come naturally, or they have been taken cruelly, we recognise the value of ritual and process — both for honouring those who have died and for our own grieving. The wakes and funerals and burials or scatterings are all part of recognising that death is part of life. Those we’ve lost, and those who mourn, deserve and get our respect.
Perhaps this partly explains why one aspect of a much larger plan for managing children travelling to school in south Co Dublin has become suddenly contentious — pitting grieving families against the safety of the living.
Deansgrange Cemetery is an oasis away from the madding traffic outside the gates on Deansgrange Road. Walking the many pathways on a watery-sunny afternoon recently, I’m conscious of the many souls resting there.
But many of the living are around too, coexisting. I see a couple of children, one on a bike, nearby. A couple walking their dog. A woman coming to visit a grave.
The wide main avenue is lined with yew trees. Just inside the gate there’s an office to the right, and a lovely award-winning teashop to the left. Here at the front of this vast cemetery — with 70 acres and more than 150,000 buried since 1865, it’s one of the largest in Dublin — there are clutches of trees, and the graves are old, many from the early 20th century. Most of these are neglected and weedy. The bulk of the graveyard, further back, a vast and exposed expanse, contains more recent graves.
Those interred include many well-known people: former taoisigh John A Costello and Seán Lemass; 17 republicans from 1916-22 and Kathleen Clarke, widow of Tom; writers Frank O’Connor and Brian O’Nolan (aka Flann O’Brien); actors and performers Milo O’Shea, Noel Purcell, Dermot Morgan; singer Delia Murphy; tenor John McCormack; physicist and Nobel laureate Ernest Walton and fashion designer Sybil Connolly.
Plans to upgrade 900 metres of an existing path just inside the cemetery, as part a longer cycleway, are concerning some bereaved families, who are worried that increased numbers on the path would disturb the tranquillity. Consultation on the plans have been ongoing since 2020, and recent objections culminated in a candlelit vigil at the cemetery entrance just over a fortnight ago on October 14th.
Susan McGarvey’s 12-year-old son Callum died in 2017 and is buried near the boundary wall, which is to be lowered. She said in September: “I go down there and I sit there in the sun and I sit there in the rain and I sit at his grave and talk to him. And I just feel that, you know, people walking past and cycling past, I don’t like it.”
The public may not be aware that you’re allowed to cycle in the cemetery already and that it is open 24/7, and when they find that out, they’re surprised
Aoife and Denis O’Connor’s daughter Emily died shortly after birth 12 years ago; she’s also buried near the Deansgrange Road wall. Her mother said earlier this month: “It’s as if they are trying to alter her grave. They are disturbing her. That’s very hard to think about.” Philip Lecane’s wife Kate died in 2020. He told The Irish Times this month: “We are very upset. We buried our dead in the hope that they could rest in peace and that we could mourn them in a dignified fashion.”
How is it that the raw grief of bereaved people has been pitched against modest plans for the living? There are volumes of analysis by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown (DLR) County Council online, teasing out options, with maps and montages, along with several rounds of public consultation attracting about 6,500 submissions — more than for all DLR projects in the previous three years combined.
But what exactly is being proposed?
Since mid-2020, DLR’s Active School Travel scheme has been connecting schools via three routes (Sea to Mountains, Park to Park, Mountains to Metals) to avoid traffic congestion around schools and encourage fewer short car journeys. Park to Park threads through several parks, from Blackrock village through Rockfield Park (the Rockies), Clonkeen Park to Bayview near Shankill, using existing walking and cycling infrastructure where possible, so 5km of the 9km route is segregated from cars. Blackrock to Bayview is now complete, bar the last 900 metres along Deansgrange Road, where both footpath and road are narrow.
Intense research and extensive consultations took place over this tiny stretch of the wider project. Eight possible options were assessed and weighted. The preferred plan was to make Deansgrange Road one-way to accommodate a cyclepath, but controversy blew up in late 2021 about a lack of vehicle access, businesses loading, residents’ parking and bus routes. Using the cemetery path instead was a compromise.
Completing the Blackrock to Bayview 9km stretch safely and attractively “would be an incredible achievement to deliver a route of this quality across an urban local authority and provide mobility options to a large proportion of residents, connecting communities, businesses, schools, sports facilities”, says Conor Geraghty, DLR senior engineer, who is managing its Active School Travel scheme. “Today Deansgrange Road has the opposite effect, creating a very significant barrier to mobility in the area.”
The compromise plans, for 900 metres through the cemetery, which can be seen in DLR’s plans and photomontages, do not appear radical. Walkers, cyclists and cars already move around in the graveyard on long-established existing paths. An additional gate, at the south corner, is proposed, for bikes and pedestrians. For security and safety, lighting will be improved. The existing cemetery wall along Deansgrange Road, which includes a railing above, is 2.3 metres high. It is to be lowered, so the stone wall will be about chest height. This means there will be some visibility into the cemetery from the footpath, through railings.
Some recent plots are in this section of the cemetery, between the high boundary wall and the path parallel to Deansgrange Road. Another public consultation on the plan closed this week and submissions will be assessed.
“We’re not proposing to introduce cycling or dedicated cycling paths to the cemetery,” says Geraghty. “We already know many people pass through the cemetery weekly. We’re not proposing to change the existing paths other than to provide public lighting. The scheme is connecting to existing paths and existing uses either side of the cemetery. The public may not be aware that you’re allowed to cycle in the cemetery already and that it is open 24/7, and when they find that out, they’re surprised.”
He is keen to reassure that, apart from lowering the wall, “all that is proposed in the cemetery is the addition of a new entrance [first proposed in 2010] to the existing path use. I can understand people’s concerns about a possible increase in cyclists through the cemetery, and that would have an impact on the cemetery. However, even with the added public lighting and improvement of the path, I don’t think that would result in large increases in cycling numbers. I believe the type of user that this scheme is designed for is the less confident or younger cyclists, rather than a high-speed commuter. They are more likely to stay on the road.”
The council has monitored existing use, and hopes more people will use the paths for safety. Geraghty says if the number of cyclists tripled, it would involve at most one or two cyclists a minute on the cemetery path.
There is, he adds, “a lot of fear around change, that it could change things for the worse. I believe this requires a shift in our thinking, specifically about sharing space between cars, cyclists and pedestrians. It is also about creating spaces for everyone to enjoy and improve our public realm. The Parks department, which manages Deansgrange Cemetery, has been working to make it more accessible over recent years. Deansgrange Cemetery has a green flag, which is something that’s normally associated with public parks. It has through routes that serve local schools and sports areas. There does not seem to be a safety concern with cars driving in the cemetery, but there seems to be a fear of people cycling through the cemetery.”
My sense about Deansgrange always was that it was an incredibly bleak place and the road into it is incredibly dangerous for anybody except drivers
It is hard to determine how widespread opposition is; local councillors are somewhat caught in the middle, with public opinion divided. Wandering around, I talk to the couple walking their dog. Deirdre and John Dunne live nearby, where they brought up their children. They have relatives buried here. It’s a lovely place to walk, they say. They don’t have a problem with the plans. “We can’t see cyclists using this place to party.” There’s mixed reaction locally, they confirm, adding their belief that the controversy has been overblown. “I don’t see a few bikes coming through disturbing people’s grief. It’s not motorbikes. Sometimes we find things to get excited about. If it was our child buried here we might feel different, but I don’t think so,” says Deirdre.
Donnchadh Morgan says “generations of Morgans” are buried in Deansgrange. There’s a memorial to his father, the satirist Dermot Morgan, on the family plot. Also there are his grandparents, his aunt who died as a child, great-grandparents, great-aunts, cousins and step-grandfather.
“I’ll be brutally honest with you. People are very easy to be upset about things that change. I can imagine there are absolutely legitimate concerns and I completely respect that. But my sense about Deansgrange always was that it was an incredibly bleak place and the road into it is incredibly dangerous for anybody except drivers. People go in there all the time.”
He says: “I don’t think all change is bad. I think you’re trying to marry reimagining a space of commemoration, a space of grief, and accommodate children on that road, an area that is absolutely well served by primary schools, where kids are taking their lives into their hands cycling. And I don’t think it’s good enough to say, well, we can’t put it there because our loved ones are there. I think, respectfully, you need to acknowledge that maybe the space can be used to accommodate the living, and do it sensitively, with consent or by consensus. I’m not wild about people imposing a particular view. I’m only speaking for myself, I couldn’t tell you what my own family says. They could have a completely different opinion. But I think when there is an access way there anyway, it could lead to reimagining what is a very depressing place. Grief is depressing anyway.”
We’ve friends in Kastel in the middle of Germany, and you walk across the graveyard to get over to the open-air swimming pool in summer, and it’s beautiful
Morgan no longer lives in Dublin, and says it is too car-centric, and needs a more imaginative approach to public transport and active travel. “I feel strongly about it for my kids too,” who are not yet old enough to cycle alone. “I’d be terrified about it.”
He strongly disagrees that the idea of people cycling through a cemetery is disrespectful in itself. “I think people, when they see change, they say no first. I can understand why but I’m a little bit more easy-going about stuff like that. There needs a very high degree of sensitivity, and consultation.
“Irish graveyards tend to be very sad, austere places. Maybe that’s the way we are. Maybe there’s a way of reimagining those spaces, for the dead as much as the living, to make it nice for them too.”
He says Deansgrange contrasts with the graveyard where his German grandparents are buried, in Blankenese, a Hamburg suburb. “You would happily go for a walk. There are birds, trees, squirrels. We’ve friends in Kastel in the middle of Germany, and you walk across the graveyard to get over to the open-air swimming pool in summer, and it’s beautiful.”
Internationally, cemeteries can be places of cultural, and social, activity. Graveyards are important on Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead, on November 1st) in Latin American culture. In Bolivia, people cook their loved ones’ favourite meal to leave at their graves. And in the Philippines, families celebrate Undas with a feast at their loved ones’ graves.
The novelist Sarah Moss, who lives near Deansgrange, recalls walkers and runners in Reykjavik graveyards when her family lived in Iceland for a year, and a bike path around a graveyard perimeter in Leiden, the Netherlands. As a recent immigrant and a cyclist, she is loath to be seen as “a crashing English harridan coming here and telling Irish people how to organise their city”. But she’s “surprised by local opposition to arrangements for children to cycle safely to school. My husband and I cycle to work. My son and his friends cycle to school, not for ‘recreation’ but because, as for a growing number of families, it’s the most affordable and efficient way for us to travel. Nobody would cycle for fun in Dublin. Every day I am relieved not to have a call from school to say that my son hasn’t arrived; every day I am relieved to see my husband wheel his bike up the garden path.”
Moss is also bothered by “this idea that cycling is always recreation, and recreation shouldn’t happen in the vicinity of the dead”. She learned from the exception to lockdown restrictions for visiting graves “how important burial sites are in Irish society. Irish people seem generally much better at speaking and thinking about grief and loss than the English, but I’m surprised to find that the importance of acts of mourning extends to priority over the safety of living children.”
She observes: “As cyclists, we are either on the road and relatively likely to end up in the cemetery ourselves at an earlier age, or on a bike path and more likely to go home that day... Mourning and grave-visiting are important, but it’s dismaying if they matter more than the lives of children. There will be more grieving families if we don’t have safe cycling infrastructure.”
