Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
FUNERALS
A CHIP pan blaze caused the deaths of 10 people and an unborn baby, an inquest heard yesterday.
And it emerged a halting site in Carrickmines, Co Dublin, was exempt from the usual council fire safety guidelines because it was temporary emergency accommodation.
Garda Det Insp Martin Creighton said the chip pan was left on a hot plate on full power in a mobile home at Glenamuck halting site in Dublin, and that was the source of the blaze.
The fire spread and a second mobile home a metre away, also went up in flames in the early hours of October 10, 2015.
Thomas Connors, 27, his wife Sylvia, 30, and their kids Jim, five, Christy, three, and six-month-old Mary, all died.
Sylvia’s brother Willie Lynch, 25, his partner Tara Gilbert, 27, who was four months pregnant, and daughters Jodie, nine, Kelsey, four, and another brother 39-year-old Jimmy Lynch – who had all been visiting – were also killed.
Det Insp Creighton said: “The electric cooker was the probable cause of the fire. There was a chip pan left on a hot plate on full power. It was close to another unit and the fire spread.”
STATEMENTS
He said he believed it was the first time that Interpol victim DNA identification had been used in this country to confirm who had died.
The detective insisted a “full and comprehensive” investigation had been carried out and around 200 witness statements were taken, while there had been close dialogue with Dublin Fire Brigade, CCTV evidence and door-todoor enquiries.
Last year, Ireland’s DPP decided not to bring criminal charges against anyone, paving the way for the full inquest to be heard at Dublin Coroner’s Court.
It is expected to last over two weeks. Tom Mchugh, the director of housing with Dun Laoghaire/rathdown council, insisted the site was only ever meant to be a “temporary emergency site”.
The council had originally planned to relocate the Connors family from a Sandyford site to one in Rathmichael over a decade ago but a family that had been living there opposed the move.
Mr Mchugh said: “The site was already established when I took on the role. It opened in 2008 to accommodate the family who were living on the roadside at the time.
“There was no planning or public consultation. The site was severely compromised by the road layout.”
Mr Mchugh added as it was a temporary site it was not subject to the same fire safety regulations as a permanent site. He said there was a fire safety regulation exemption on temporary emergency sites and there was no time limit on such sites remaining as temporary emergency sites. Meanwhile, Conor Peoples, a senior staff member at the Dun Laoghaire/rathdown housing department, told Coroner Myra Cullinane they had received “no training or instruction on the guidelines” and there was no mention during their meetings about work being completed on the site.
He added: “We didn’t think there were any safety issues.”
Mr Peoples said there was only a one metre distance between the two mobile homes when the blaze spread between the two homes.
He admitted he “wasn’t aware” at the time that there was an issue with the short distance separating the portacabins, but he now understood the “optimum” distance to meet fire safety standards should be at least six metres.