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The number of people choosing cremation in Ireland has steadily risen.

In 1963 Pope Paul VI lifted the ban on cremation for Catholics and, in the intervening years up to today, the number of people choosing cremation in Ireland has steadily risen.

Prior to 2006, those living in Cork who wished to be cremated had to do so in Dublin. Since the opening of the Island Crematorium on Rocky Island in Cork that year, it has become easier and more cost effective for those living in the local area to choose cremation.

Yet while business at the Island Crematorium has flourished, and while one Funeral Director in Cork City cites cremations as 65 per cent of his business – the traditional burial still reigns locally, according to one Fermoy-based funeral director.

“We would do roughly half a dozen cremations in a year,” according to Steven Walsh of Martin Nelligan & Sons Funeral Directors, “Which is significantly up from a few years back when we would have done none at all.”

Currently there are four crematoriums in Ireland; three in Dublin and one locally in Cork. “Speaking to the manager of the Island Crematorium in Cork, he’s said there’s been a 500 per cent increase in cremations in recent years, so it is becoming more popular,” added Mr Walsh.

The growing shortage of burial plots in graveyards, along with the high costs associated with burials in the current economically challenging times, has been seen as a factor as more people choose cremation as their preferred option of final disposition after death.

“For Kilcrumper, a single grave is €600 and then for a grave for two people it’s €1,000.  For cremation, it’s around €750 but you don’t have the associated costs with burials, such as gravediggers.

“Even recently they’ve found a lot of rock in Kilcrumper, so more and more people will probably be turning to cremation in the future,” he told The Avondhu.

To give a Cork City example, John Keohane of Keohane’s Funeral Directors said the far higher cost of graves in the urban area has a strong bearing on people’s minds.

“The cheapest grave here in the Cork region would be about €1,300 and you could go up as far as €1,500. It helps that we have a crematorium in the Munster area. Before you'd have to go to Dublin.

“It's the trend, if you go over to England, crematoriums are a very big thing there, the majority of people there are cremated,” he said, adding that approximately 65 per cent of his business goes to the crematorium rather than the graveyard. "While the traditional funeral is still there and will be still there for a long time to come – there is a change coming,” he said.

A 2013 article in Time Magazine, titled ‘The New American Way Of Death’, stated that by 2017 one in two people in America would choose cremation over burial.

While that statistic might not replicate itself in Ireland by then, there is little doubt that 52 years after the Catholic Church lifted its ban, cremation is providing a viable alternative to the traditional burial.

Furthermore, cremation provides the family with a wealth of options once the person is deceased.

“The ashes can be transported easily. You can fly with them, they can be buried in a particular place, scattered someplace, you can turn them into jewellery, split them between family – there’s a lot of options with the ashes after cremation,” added Mr Walsh.

International cremation statistics show that in 2010 over 3,000 people were cremated in Ireland – accounting for 11 per cent of all deaths that year. This contrasted with 99.94 per cent in Japan and over 73 per cent in the United Kingdom.

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