Today sees firstever cremation in county
This afternoon, Wednesday, July 7, will see the first-ever cremation in the county at a new facility just outside Cavan Town.
The new crematorium is at Finnegan’s Funeral Home, now re-branded as 'Lakeland Funeral Home & Crematorium’ and co-owners Declan and Teresa Finnegan are finally seeing the project come to fruition, five years after its inception.
The crematorium itself, Declan says, represents an investment of €1m in the state-of-the-art technology involved and although reluctant to put a figure on it, he claims it will create jobs at the Dublin Road funeral home and bring a boost to the local economy.
The system, which reaches temperatures of 800 degrees, came from Holland and was installed by crane on May 27 and is the first of its kind available to rural Ireland.
“Basically, over the past number of years we’ve noticed an increase in demand from families for cremation,” says Declan. “There’s a variety of reasons for that; cost, availability of a plot, maybe there aren’t any family members to tend a grave, personal reasons but there is an increase.
“When the first cremator went into Ringiskiddy there was around a two per-cent demand for cremation, which immediately jumped to ten per cent. I’d estimate that we might do 500 a year or 10 a week.”
He is quick to dispel possible mythologies on the process:
“It’s extremely environmentally friendly. The air actually coming out of the chimney is cleaner than the air we breathe,” he says. “Families can be guaranteed that the ashes are those of a loved one, I want to get that across, in that we have a system whereby the person is cremated with a numbered coin that survives the process and proves that the ashes are of that person and that the coffin itself goes through the process and families can witness the committal of the person being put into the cremator,” he said.
The first cremation is that of a Raphoe, Co Donegal, native, which prompted the mortuary in Letterkenny General Hospital to ask for more forms on cremation, such was their untapped demand - enough to convince AIB in Cavan to back the project, which had planning permission from Cavan County Council since 2010.
Cost
“Cost is a factor for people, we had our own funding issues during the recession, grants promised and so on, of course, but for people themselves you are talking about finding a plot, which could cost thousands, maintaining it, the cost of headstone and so on... this is cheaper. But also, just in and around the parish, for example, you have two cemeteries in Cullies and Killygarry but for the last two or three years there are no new plots in Killygarry so that’s another difficulty for people with the water table and environmental concerns making it harder.
“Emigration is another factor for people, in that there might not be a family here to attend to the grave of a loved one. So, we will have a live-feed on the website of all the funerals so people in Canada, the US, Australia and view the live-stream at Lakelands,” he said.
Funeral-goers themselves can also remain in the chapel and watch the next-door process on an internal-feed TV screen.
The process of cremation itself will actually benefit the local St Christopher’s Hospice with any metals retrieved from the remains sold and donated - for example gold fillings or metal implants in joints.
The final resting place of the cremated, if desired, can also be at the funeral home in their new garden, which is encased by walls containing vertical plots of 12” by 8” stainless steel containers covered in granite but Declan stresses the remains on the deceased and peace of mind for the family:
“It’s an open-door policy for families with transparency the whole way through.”