The crime levels in Clonminch cemetery are soaring. Thieves have stolen my son's 6th birthday present from his grave. Beautiful red glass stones. On the day before his birthday, we noticed that a lot of his stones had been removed and that the grave next to his had a couple of stones left but we spread out what Josh had left and went on thinking that it was an act of nesting birds, as unfortunate as that was. A couple of days ago, I received a message from Mary Mccreanor, Grandmother of Baby Wayne McCreanor Cuskelly who is in the grave next to Joshua, explaining that the remainder of Joshua's stones had disappeared and that Wayne's grave had been emptied of coins as well as his beautiful pebbles. We spoke for a little while and came to the conclusion that it was either humans or birds (We hoped for the latter) and I said I would look into it and come back when I had an answer. Yesterday, I phoned birdwatch Ireland. They are experts in avian behaviour and would have a lot more insight than ourselves into these issues. They told me that although birds have been known to poach stones off of graves, it was not possible for birds to make off with 40kg of stones from only two graves (conveniently being the two most recently decorated) and leave no trail. This was an act of humans, not birds With this in mind, I phoned the parish centre twice and spoke to our parish priest, Fr. Joe Gallagher. I explained what had happened and what I had learned. He seemed taken aback that this had happened and said that he had never heard of this happening in there before. Though the more examples of incidents I described, the more he acknowledged. I said that I felt that there was a requirement for cctv in the graveyard at this stage as there have been several serious incidents of violence, vandalism of graves, muggings, thefts from cars and threats made towards people before these incidents of theft from children's graves. I'm sorry to say that Tullamore Parish are not willing to install safety measures in our graveyard to protect our dead and those visiting. They are not even willing to consider it. They claim to have no money for it and that the space is too big for surveillance. I suggested at least putting cameras at the 2 entrances and locking the gates at night. The answer was non changing. In fact the answer was, "I don't have an answer for you." I am deeply aggrieved that the issue of privacy is more important to our church than our safety. That despite all of the money saved in the past couple of years, and the money put into the buckets at cemetery mass, they cannot find a red cent to put towards cctv. He quite rightly said that "it's a sign of the times we're living in." Indeed. We're living in a time where crime rates are high. People are desperate for money and for reasons beyond my capacity, they feel the need to thieve the only thing a parent can give to their dead child away from them. Josh's grave is his home and someone felt the need to steal that from him. Offaly Co. Council have no hand or part to play in the graveyard in Clonminch, they have told me that it is Church property and that if the church choose not to put in cctv, I'm fighting a losing battle. Though, they sympathised.... I'm not allowing my hands to be tied. Families are being threatened, graves are being sprayed, people's cars are being broken into, some have been mugged and followed around. People are using drugs in the graveyard on the bench that SoSad generously donated. People are using our graveyard as a brothel because the parish don't even bother to lock the gates at night. The McCreanor and Cuskelly families have been devastated by this disgraceful act, as have my family. I'd like to just note here that I don't blame Fr. Joe entirely for this. He may be the head of our church locally but he is not the entire parish council. The responsibility lies with them to fix this. Also, some people have offered me money to replace Joshua's stones. That's not my wish. Although I'm grateful for that gesture, we don't need help replacing the stones but have chosen not to do so until this issue is resolved as I'd really rather not leave him open to be targeted once again. If you want to help, just share this and get people annoyed enough to demand their safety. If any of you have a loved one whose grave you would like protected or would just like to support this action, please sign my petition below and make this happen. The very least our loved ones deserve is to rest in peace.