An architect’s proposed plans for the pet cemetery.

Pet owners will soon be able to preserve the ashes of their beloved pets in a pigeonhole in the wall after burial proposals were shot down in previous years.

Animal lovers have, for years, been calling for a place where they can put their dead creatures.

Animal Rights Parliamentary Secretary Roderick Galdes said in Parliament this week an application for a pet cemetery with a small incinerator had been submitted to the planning authority in February.

The cemetery, in Ta’ Qali, will cover an area of about 1,900 square metres where people will be able to put an urn with their pets’ ashes in free-standing walls.

An incinerator, which usually costs about £10,500, and a burial preparation room will be built in the centre of the cemetery, surrounded by rows of burial walls having 17,000 compartments of about 30cm by 30cm. Otherwise, people can choose to cremate their pet at the cemetery and take the remains home.

A cemetery for animal carcasses is against EU regulations because dead pets are considered to be animal by-products that must be burnt.

Dogs and cats will still be cremated individually, put in an urn, and placed in a compartment in a wall

The only way to develop a cemetery for animals is to have an incinerator, with the ashes then being buried, unless the country applied for a derogation.

The debate has been going on for years and an animal lover had even filed an application with the planning authority to have a cemetery for dead animals in 2008 and 2010 but these were rejected.

The authority had cited the loss of agricultural land and groundwater contamination as two reasons why there should not be an animal cemetery.

The call for a place where pets could be put to rest was reignited in 2011 when Star, which had survived after being buried alive, died suddenly and animal lovers made an appeal not to bury it again.

Building an animal cemetery was also one of the Labour Party’s electoral pledges.

So the Animal Rights Parliamentary Secretariat revisited proposals by the previous administration for a cemetery at Ta’ San Ġakbu, Ta’ Qali, head of secretariat, Ivor Robinich, told this newspaper.

Applying for a derogation to be able to bury animals would have taken long and burying carcasses also required a large amount of land. At the moment, there are already more than 50,000 micro-chipped dogs in Malta.

“So we looked at the other option: cremation. Initially, we considered burying the ashes and this would have created the same issue of space. Instead, we explored the initiative of placing the urns above ground. Dogs and cats will still be cremated individually, put in an urn, and placed in a compartment in a wall,” Mr Robinich said.

Through the public-private partnership project, people will be able to buy a compartment and place as many urns as they want or take them home with them.

This option not only resolves the space issue but also eliminates the risk of the aquifer getting contaminated by nitrate.

The application was cleared by the health authorities and the secretariat was carrying out the planning development statement. The proposal might have to go through an environmental impact process and was subject to change, he noted.

If everything goes smoothly, a permit might be out next year and the secretariat would then issue an expression of interest.