To make matters worse, waste ground immediately to the left of the cemetery is used by foul-mouthed quad bikers who raise 20-foot sprays of mud in the air and who cause “indescribable noise.”

The cemetery was developed at Riverstown when the Co. Council failed to secure a more suitable site closer to the Holy Cross Church but from its inception it has been the subject of controversy due to its proximity to the town dump and the fact that it floods.

In a letter to the Co. Council’s area manager, Brian White, this week, the current condition of the graveyard is deplored. Following numerous complaints, Cllr. Joe Conway said that he visited the cemetery on Sunday last and he said that what he experienced was “truly appalling.”

He described the palisade fencing at the entrance as harsh and pointed out that there was no signage for the cemetery, except for “Riverstown Industrial Estate.”

“Passing this and bearing left towards the graveyard entrance, I entered a morass of soil, grit, stones and fouled water.

Up to the entrance it was clear that both gates had fallen out of alignment. Inside, mounds of earth and debris, and the flowers on graves were floating in six inches of water — indeed, surface water was everywhere,” he also told the Co. Council’s area manager.

Stating that the cemetery was an affront to the people of Tramore, their dead, and everyone who would one day rest there, Cllr. Conway urged that improvement work should be carried out immediately. “Another family should not have to suffer this outrage and indignity. Mourners deserve to honour their loss in peace, quietude and with due respect,” he went on.

For starters, he recommended the removal of the Riverstown Industrial Estate sign at the entrance suggesting that it be relocated inside the estate or on approach at the main road.

The palisade fencing should be masked with suitable climbers, a temporary tar and chip roadway should be laid down to the cemetery entrance and all debris should be removed.

Gardai should be asked to stop all scrambling / quadbiking activity in the ground adjacent to the cemetery and a landscaper should be commissioned to provide suitable shrubs and climbers around the forbidding block walls. Drainage gullies, he added, should be put in place to run off surface water and last but not least decorative signage should be erected at the cemetery gates.

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