A descendant of Omey islanders has demanded that all remains of human burials removed in an emergency excavation from the Connemara island’s graveyard be returned.
As The Sunday Independent reports, Maggie Coohill has said she is “disappointed and disgusted”, and very frustrated at the response to queries she has submitted in relation to the location of up to 60 skeletons taken from Omey graveyard in the early 1990s.
Support for Coohill and the Omey descendants has been voiced by Marie Coyne, who led the campaign to have skulls held at Trinity College, Dublin, returned for burial on Inishbofin.
“The Omey remains must be returned as soon as possible to Omey island, as this was their resting place and must be again,” Ms Coyne told The Sunday Independent.
“By now, some 30 years since they were removed, enough tests must have been done on them, and also remember these people did not donate their bodies to medical science,” Ms Coyne said.
“These people have suffered enough in life and deserve a proper burial; they deserve respect,” she said.
The excavation at Omey Island, led by Prof Tadgh O’Keeffe of University College Dublin, was commissioned in the early 1990s after storm damage, coastal erosion, and rabbit burrowing exposed several graves on the Omey shoreline which were at risk of being washed into the Atlantic.
Ms Coohill and several of her cousins have spent the last nine years campaigning for their return after an appeal by her late father, who was one of the tidal island’s last full-time residents.
Just over a year ago, the State’s chief archaeologist Michael MacDonagh apologised to the Omey, Cleggan and Claddaghduff communities for lack of communication over the past three decades on the issue.
Mr MacDonagh said at a public meeting in the summer 2022 that there was no evidence of material from recent burials having been taken during the excavation. He said that research was continuing on the skeletons dating from the 7th to 15th century.
Ms Coohill said she was not happy with the level of communication since this meeting and objected to the suggestion that the skeletons would be kept in the care of the State rather than being reburied as had been originally promised.
A spokesman for the National Monuments Service said it had been in contact with Ms Coohill and informed her that human archaeological remains excavated from Omey island had been recently transferred from UCD to the National Museum Collections Resource Centre in Swords, Co Dublin, where they were being re-catalogued and analysed.
“Discussions with the National Museum on potential reburial of some of the remains will take place following the completion of necessary full analyses of the remains,” the spokesman said.
Read more in The Sunday Independent here.
