Funerals have a very special significance in Irish society. People gather in great numbers to sympathise, to console, to share and grieve with the bereaved.

Many attend funerals as a statement of the esteem in which they hold the family as much as a tribute to the deceased.

Funerals can be a time of reconciliation when old differences are put aside and relationships restored.

In managing a funeral, the undertaker takes on a huge role as families rely on him to ensure that every last detail is attended to.

The Griffin family have been involved in undertaking since 1860, when John Griffin set up a coach business in Church Street, near King John's Castle.

Today, Gerry Griffin is the fourth generation of the family to look after Limerick's dead, and care for families at a time of great distress and trauma.

"It was originally a posting business which involved the hire of horses and cars, when people wanted to go to various places around Limerick, Clare and Tipperary," said Gerry.

"As he had horses and transport, he was at some point asked to do a funeral, and it developed from there. And we used horse drawn hearses up to 1963."

John Griffin, moved the business to its present address on Gerald Griffin Street in 1890 when it was known as Cornwallace Street.

He had two sons, Johnny and Dan, who lived in Mulgrave Street.

Disaster struck the Griffin family in 1912 when the founder of the business, his wife and a house-keeper and a couple staying with them perished in a fire which destroyed the Gerald Griffin Street premises.

Gerry Griffin recalled: "The fire started in the stables at the back of the premises. These were located in a two storey building and the horses were stabled in the upstairs section with the coaches and hearses housed in the ground floor area.

"There were 15 horses, three hearses and 12 carriages in that building when a fire started in a hay loft. The fire brigade came and put out the fire.

"All the horses were brought to other stables for safety.

"When they went back to bed, unfortunately, the fire flared again and they all died when it spread to the main residence. Mrs Griffin was killed when she jumped from an upstairs window."

After that, the two sons, Johnny and Dan, took over the business, and Johnny and his wife Mainell moved back to Gerald Griffin Street after the premises was rebuilt.

Johnny died in 1934 and the business was kept going by Mainell and her brother-in-law, Dan, and they were in charge until 1949.

At that point, the business passed on to the third generation when Johnny's son, Joe, took over.

Said Gerry: "My father, Joe contracted tuberculosis and died in 1956 at the age of 39. My parents had been living in Davis Street and on the death of my grandmother, Mainell, they moved down to Gerald Griffin Street.

"My mother, Ettie, was a McSweeney and lived and worked in Hanratty's Hotel, which was owned by her aunt. My father met her when he used to go to the hotel.

"When my father died, she was left with five young children and she took over the business. She ran it with the help of very good people like Christy Howard and Paddy Morrissey and kept the business going until I finished school in 1974."

After doing his leaving cert exam at St Munchin's, Gerry spent a year with O'Connor funeral undertakers, learning the business.

He returned in 1975 and still runs the business.

Gerry had been helping out in the business since he was about seven years of age, and still recalls as a young boy doing many of the small but essential chores.

"I remember going to the engravers, Jones, in Catherine Street with the brass plates for coffins, and cycling over to the City Home with habits for people who died there. I would hand the habit to a man in the gate lodge.

"The habit would have a label saying it was for the body of such and such a person. From the age of fifteen, I was playing a very active role in the business travelling as the passenger in the hearse, who was called a mute, because you were supposed to keep your mouth shut and just help."

At the age of 17, Gerry got his full driver's licence and this enabled him to drive a hearse.

"Two weeks after my seventeenth birthday, I was driving the hearse. Because of the amount of work, I was regularly needed in the business although still going to St Munchin's College.

"When I was doing my leaving in 1974, my mother asked me on the morning of the last exam what was on in the afternoon and I told her it was the second maths paper.

"She asked me what time it would be finished and I said about half-three. I asked her if there was a problem and she said she needed somebody to drive a hearse after a three o'clock funeral Mass at St Munchin's church. When I finished my lunch, I drove the hearse out to St Munchin's college, did my exam paper in an hour, handed up my paper to the supervisor, ran out, got into the hearse and drove it to St Munchin's Church and did the funeral.

"And I did pass the exam."

The previous year, Gerry took charge of his first big funeral, that of the late Bishop Henry Murphy.

"That was my first time doing a complete funeral."

The biggest change in undertaking has been the advent of the funeral home, taking the traditional wake out of the home of the deceased.

Gerry opened the first funeral home in Limerick at Gerald Griffin Street in 1974.

"The funeral home was pioneered in Cork by Val O'Connor who brought the idea back from America in the mid-1960's. Limerick was the second city to take up the idea when I opened ours."

Interestingly, Limerick had a funeral home before there was one in Dublin. Even today, the funeral home concept hasn't taken on in Dublin, where the custom is for people to go to the church to meet the funeral rather than to a funeral home to view the remains and offer sympathy there.

However, in Munster and most of the rest of the country, attendance at the funeral home is the predominant practice.

Said Gerry: "The service which the undertaker provides has also widened to include such matters as the arrangement of catering in a hotel or the home of the family.

"We can provide security in the home while the family are at the funeral. We always advise to get a neighbour in to look after the house and, if necessary, we can get in professional security.

"We arrange accommodation for people who might have to come from abroad. And we even arrange dress hire and provide black suites at short notice if required."

He says they have now gone from being undertakers to "complete funeral management."

Meeting a bereaved family in their home is something he prefers, as it enables the undertaker to speak with as many members of the family as possible.

The undertaker has to meet people in a very distressed and traumatised state, particularly where there has been the death of a child or a person in an accident.

How does he cope in these circumstances?

He replied: "I think if you know and trust that what you are doing is helping the family, it goes a long way in putting away the consequences of the person's death in your own mind.

"You are there as a carer to take the organisational part out of the way, so that members of a family can give more time to supporting one another, rather than having to worry about the funeral arrangements.

"There are times, particularly the death of a child or young person, you would prefer not to have to go to work that day. At the same time you know you have to do it, as for every ten older persons who die, you will have a young person's funeral.

"And you just get as efficient as you can to be of most help to the family and that's how you handle it. If you are working long hours and you are tired, it can get to you at times, and it's necessary to get away."

But his work, he says, is less stressful than that of clergy, Gardai, ambulance and medical people who have to go and bring news of a death to a family.

The cost of funerals is something the undertaker has to broach diplomatically, but a family will need the financial details when making arrangements.

Said Gerry: "Our family's policy always has been that we supply a service, and that service from family A to family Z is essentially the same. There is a complete level of service which is the same for every family."

Coffins can vary in price from solid bronze, costing as much as £6,000, to the more regular coffin, which costs about £500.

As a rule, he says they point a family in the direction of the mid to lower range priced coffin, rather than the more expensive ones.

If people, he said, want to change to a more expensive coffin, they can then go up step-by-step rather than overspending from the outset.

But he stressed the service is the same for every family.

Another big cost is the price of a grave. At present a single grave in Mount St Oliver capable of accommodating three coffins costs £345 and a plot near a pathway will cost up to £565.

It costs £220 to have a grave opened with an additional £70 cost on a Saturday. And there is an extra charge of £70 an hour if a funeral arrives late at a city cemetery. Funerals are allowed about 20 minutes leeway, but the £70 then comes into effect. And there is a £70 charge for every hour after that for late arrivals.

An increasing number of funerals take place to the crematorium in Glasnevin.

"If we had a crematorium in Limerick we would have more cremations here. But at present the numbers would not warrant the investment in a crematorium as the set-up cost would be very high."

Coffins which are destined for the crematorium have removable fittings which are taken off on arrival at the crematorium. And the system of different levels of gas-based heat, separates the human ash from that of the coffin and its internal fitting. The human ash is then returned in an urn.

The family or dependant of a person paying PRSI can now recoup £500 for funeral expenses from the State.

Gerry said there is a now a big problem in the city suburbs, as the cemeteries in Mungret and Kilmurry are full and, as a result, burials are now taking place in outlying cemeteries in the county.

"We are totally under-catered for in Limerick with cemetery space at the moment. The County Council has plans for a new cemetery in Mungret, but how long it will take I don't know. There is no cemetery in the city or its environs to cover Monaleen, Castletroy, Coonagh, Caherdavin, Ballykeeffe, Dooradoyle, Raheen right out to Mungret.

"And if you go to the County Council it is your right to be supplied with a grave, so they are sending funerals out to Castleconnell, Pallasgreen, Adare, Kilcornan and Murroe."

Mount St Oliver has a capacity of 6,000 graves with less than half that occupied at present.

The three funeral directors in the city deal with about 1,000 funerals a year.

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