Galway County Council has conceded it cannot keep up with its responsibility to maintain graveyards, and has had to rely on the goodwill of local communities.
However, many graveyards have become overgrown. In one instance Ms Kathleen Canavan, from Newcastle in Galway city, has been prevented from reaching her mother's resting place near Clifden in Connemara.
Ms Canavan said she had been a regular visitor to the graveyard at Kille, Kingstown, outside Clifden, where her mother Celia is buried.
However, on a recent visit she could only get to within 25 yards of her mother's grave and could only see the tip of the headstone from where she stood.
"It's like a jungle. It's an absolute disgrace. It is heartbreaking to come to your mother's final resting place and see such an awful mess and then to be prevented from even standing at the graveside because the whole place is so terribly overgrown," she said. Weeds and bushes completely cover most of the graves and the pathways in the cemetery.
Galway County Council, which owns the cemetery, says it is not possible to maintain all the graveyards in the county and it has to rely on the goodwill of local communities. A spokesman for the council says grants are available to communities to carry out maintenance work and clean neglected graves and pathways. Skips are often provided so families can clean their family plots without expense.
But Ms Canavan is calling on the council to do the work and honour its duty to communities. "It's just not good enough for the council to wait for people to do their work. I realise the individual graves are the responsibility of the families whose loved ones are buried there, but the grounds are the responsibility of the council," she said.
Ms Canavan lives 55 miles from the cemetery and says it would be impossible for her to do the work needed. "In Galway city, the corporation does an excellent job of maintaining its graveyards so why can't the county council do the same?" she asks.