Breandrum Cemetery in Enniskillen
IF YOU do not want your family to undergo undue expense in burying you when you die, then Fermanagh is the place for it to happen.
But, stay away from Dublin where a funeral could set you back €17,000 in one leading cemetery. By comparison, it will cost you £2,520 in Fermanagh, and that’s not counting extra hours on the road.
A UK survey has found that the Lakeland County is the cheapest place for a burial, followed by Antrim, Derry and Tyrone among the ‘bottom five’ for burial prices.
For all that, the cost of a funeral in Northern Ireland has increased dramatically in the last two years.
The survey, by Engage Mutual Assurance, Harrowgate, shows that the average costs of a burial in the north is now £3,517, up £322 from 2012.
Cremations have also risen, with the average cremation in 2014 costing £3,062 compared to £2,666 in 2012.
Here, Antrim is also in the ‘bottom five’, and the fact that Fermanagh doesn’t feature is probably due to the fact that cremation is still relatively uncommon here.
“It’s a religious thing”, one well-known funeral undertaker in the county told the Herald. “We have done about four in the 10 years that we’ve been going.”
As for Fermanagh being the cheapest in the whole of the UK for burials, he was genuinely surprised.
“Generally, a funeral costs £2,520, but there wouldn’t be much profit-wise out of that. As it is, our costs in no way reflect the number of hours we put in.
“Take one recent funeral we did: I started at 8.30 in the morning and I didn’t get finished till 9.15 that night, so if you were to charge, say, £15 or £20 an hour in professional fees, there is no way people could afford the bill.”
The man, who asked not to be identified, suggested that funeral costs in Fermanagh are kept down by the traditional use of the ‘wake’ house rather than a funeral home, and burial instead of cremation.
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