I know we're in the grip of moneymaking but we can't just bulldoze our ancestors

Nuala O'Faolain

WHAT would you think of someone who walked away from the body of a dead parent, and left it to someone else to bury it or not? What would you think of a family or community so mad with materialism that it threw the bodies of those who died in poverty into the ditch, and left the corpses to turn to dust without marker or memorial? Can you even imagine a culture that turns its back on its ancestors?

From the Pyramids to Poulnabrone, from the effigy ancestors of New Guinea to the shrines kept perfect within Japanese homes, everywhere on earth and throughout history, living people have honoured the dead, as if by doing that the mystery of existence is best acknowledged and the hope of some kind of immortality best expressed.

Ireland, I know, is in the grip of money-making. But still, I was sincerely shocked to be alerted by a reader to the fact that the burial places beside what were the Irish workhouses . . . the Bully's Acres . . . are being bought and sold for development without anyone coming to their defence. And without any of the state and semistate and voluntary bodies that are supposed to protect our heritage stepping forward to protect them. I always thought that people in general were awed by workhouses. I've always noticed when I've sought them out . . . from ivy-covered hulks like the one in Swanlinbar to fragments, like the stretch of wall that's all that's left of Kilrush's workhouse . . . that any grass and weeds and bushes near them are undisturbed. Even children kept a distance, knowing by instinct that they are not ordinary places.

Who would have thought that burial ground could be bought and sold . . . that it could be bulldozed for profit?

But in Ballymahon this year some local people became concerned about an application for housing development in what was the purlieu of the local workhouse. They looked around and saw that it appeared that houses had already been built on Athlone's Bully's Acre, and that the field that contained the Bully's Acre in Roscommon was up for sale and likely to be developed.

They wrote to An Bord Pleanala, pointing out that over the period when their local workhouse was in active use (1853-1921) there were at times 1200 people living there. "Anecdotal information (four different sources) has come to light, " their petition goes, "which indicates that there are likely to be unmarked graves within the area of the workhouse. It would appear that there may also have been a separate grave area for unbaptised children."

These people asked that the board specify, if permission was given for development, that "if unmarked graves be located, appropriate action be taken so that these graves are not built over".

These wouldn't necessarily be the graves of long-ago, Famine dead.

Longford workhouse, for example, used its Bully's Acre for poor people without relatives who died in the old people's home in Longford town as late as 1960s. The Ennistymon workhouse and, I'm sure, many others also had paupers living in the buildings well into the 20th century. Presumably, when they died, their remains were interred somewhere nearby. And many of those somewheres are now valuable sites. An Bord Pleanala has not, as far as I know, issued its decision yet.

It shouldn't get as far as An Bord Pleanala. But who is there to turn to? One of the Ballymahon people tried to contact all the different agencies that any of us would think, from the words 'environment' or 'heritage' in their titles, might take an interest. But he got the runaround. No one would take responsibility . . . no one felt that they were the right person or that their agency was quite the right agency to get involved "at this time".

And I'm not surprised.

This is not some sweet little matter of putting up a plaque that will hurt nobody.

This is about having the power to stand between siteowners and big profit . . .

something which can't be left to councillors, since councillors typically do what developers tell them. It would take someone with real commitment, whether a minister or a determined department secretary, to circumvent legitimate sales of what may well be burial pits to buyers indifferent to that possibility. It would take someone who really believes that there is such a thing as land we should either not build on or build on only with the most special care.

Dick Roche is Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, and he is usually a most forceful minister. But I wonder whether this is beyond him?

There are so many ways in which this is a national issue that maybe no one less than a Taoiseach could address it?

But who's going to approach Dick Roche or Bertie Ahern on the part of people of no property who are dead? Who cares? Who cares who has any clout?

Dick Roche could, and patently should, at the very least commission an inventory of the sites. There were 163 workhouses and what's needed is for someone to gather information on the present status of their unmarked grave sites.

That's the easy part . . . the part that puts off action.

Some way would still need to be found to enforce respect for the sites. This is a race between greed and commemoration, and the race may well be lost, in the end, to greed. But if so . . . if in our time, these ancestors of ours are finally and forever dishonoured, let it also be in our time that a record of the places where they were dishonoured is made.