David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Rituals such as weddings and First Holy Communions and everything else, are getting more and more expensive. People think that they benefit the person who should be the principal object of the ceremony. I am not sure that they do. I have ordered a wicker coffin. It is very nice and cheap.

In these circumstances we need a little bit of levity. I heard on the radio yesterday a piece about, I think, the Emperor Joseph II of Austria-Hungary among whose various inventions was the reusable coffin, the bottom of which had a spring. At the appropriate moment a button could be pushed, the corpse was deposited in the ground and the coffin recycled. There were immense protests in Vienna against this because it was seen as ruining a good party. The old people in the area near me would always save more enthusiastically for their funerals than for their Christmas turkeys but I believe that we should help the living and let the dead look after themselves, if they can.