The fire that led to the deaths of ten members of the travelling community, including five children, at a halting site was an accident waiting to happen. For decades, travellers in Ireland have been treated like second, or third class, citizens with many hundreds of families forced to live on the side of the road in unhygienic conditions without adequate water, electricity and other basic services.

That the Connors, Lynch and Gilbert families who lost their lives in the Carrickmines tragedy were living in this ‘temporary’ site for over ten years underlines the complete failure of government and local authority efforts to provide decent housing for the traveller community, settled or otherwise.

There are complex issues arising from the culture and ethnicity of the Irish traveller community but there can be no excuse for leaving young families in the squalor and deprivation evident at the Carrickmines site. Is it too much to ask that this tragedy which took the lives of five adults, five children and an unborn child can never be allowed to happen again?