Thinking Inside The Box

Mark Kinsella at his Greystones office FRI10JAN25

t was back in 2005 when siblings Jay and Dympna Coleman decided that having an r.i.p. website for all of Ireland would be a good idea.

The fact that one worked in an office and the other on a farm didn’t stop them from stepping into the hi-tech world of coding and programming.

The site just needed to be functional, rather than slick, RIP.ie ending up looking far more like Ireland’s Own than V.I.P. Magazine.

It did the trick though, and soon brother and sister found themselves running one of the most popular sites in the country. Something that The Irish Times clearly took notice of, bringing RIP.ie into the fold back in May 2024.

The media outlet has, after all, been publishing death and family notices since the 1800s. So, there’s a good chance they know what they’re doing. And they can do it well.

Still, when it was announced that the long-standing charge of €15 for funeral directors to post notices on RIP.ie was going to now cost €100, there was, unsurprisingly, an outcry.

Including a call from our own Jennifer Whitmore TD for the State to run their own death notice website.

It’s a price that’s in line for the industry though. For example, like many radio stations, East Coast FM charges for death notices – in their case, a tidy €125. Your snoreaway Guide, on the other hand, doesn’t charge. Because we have zero business sense.

So, not every funeral director is up in arms about the RIP.ie move, as Mark Kinsella proved when we caught up with him for a ramble chat this afternoon…