Priest urges empathy for Travellers after Carrickmines tragedy

A priest comforting the Connors family who lost five members in the Carrickmines halting site fire has hit out at anti-Traveller prejudice in society and government failures to address the community’s needs.

Fr Dermot Lane, parish priest of Balally in south Dublin, spoke as the remains of Sylvia and Thomas Connors and three of their children, Jim, five; Christie, two, and Mary, five months, were brought to the local Church of the Ascension yesterday evening in advance of their funeral Mass today.

He said while the tragedy had shocked the entire nation, it also raised serious questions about society’s priorities and about the responses, or lack of responses, by successive governments to a variety of reports going back to the mid-1960s.