The deaths of 10 people in a fire at a Traveller halting site in Dublin a decade ago were “like a devastating earthquake” leaving families with “multiple and multilayered” traumas, a remembrance Mass heard on Friday.
Fr Derek Farrell, who was parish priest to the Traveller community when a fire engulfed a mobile home at a temporary halting site in Carrickmines in the early hours of October 10th, 2015, co-celebrated the Mass in Bray, Co Wicklow, where two of the three bereaved families live.
Those who died were Thomas Connors (27), his wife Sylvia (30, née Lynch) and their children Jim (5), Christy (3) and Mary (six months), Sylvia’s brothers Willy (25) and Jimmy (39), and Willy’s partner Tara Gilbert (27), her daughter Jodie (9) and their daughter Kelsey (4).
An inquest in 2019 found the fire started in an overheated chip-pan. All 10 died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning.
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Welcoming congregants, who included members of the wider Traveller community, Denise Cahill of Bray Travellers Community Development Group, said the Lynch, Gilbert and Connors families wanted them not to mourn, but “to remember the lives that were lived, to remember the love, laugher and joy that the victims brought to our lives”.
Family members brought framed photographs of their loved ones to the altar, some kissing the portraits as they rested them down.
Fr Farrell said the families often used the phrase “when everything happened” when referring to the events of October 10th, 2015 and their aftermath.
“It is a phrase that captures ... the difficulties not only on the anniversary each year but every day since,” he said. “It tells something of the multiple and multilayered heartbreaking losses that you have suffered in losing your much-loved family members ... it tells something of the deep shock and trauma of the horrific event and its aftermath ...[and the] additional suffering and sad losses since.”
Everything that happened, he said, was “like a devastating earthquake of loss ... that left families with aftershocks”.
He spoke about each victim individually and rememberedTara Gilbert’s twin Amanda, who died by suicide in 2018.
In the days and weeks after the fire there were “so many acts of compassion” he said, citing flags being flown at half-mast and how grieving families were welcomed at Áras an Uachtaráin by President Michael D Higgins.
“For a few precious moments ... the eyes of the nation” were on the unsafe conditions in which many Travellers lived.
At the funerals he had hoped the tragedy would be “a watershed” moment after which conditions would improve.
Almost 10 years on from being the community’s parish priest, he said: “It would be good to know from those who would know [statutory bodies) whether conditions had improved].”
[ Fire in Carrickmines, 10 years on: ‘Some don’t want to talk, some are angry’Opens in new window ]
During the Massa choir sang Amazing Grace, I Have a Dream, closing with You’ll Never Walk Alone.
