There was nowhere to shelter from the bitter chill that swept through the seaside town of Bray yesterday as five of the ten victims of the Carrickmines fire were laid to rest.
The sight of the three silver coffins for the adults and two white ones for the children being borne into the church as a string quartet played Abide With Me brought early tears among the throngs of mourners.
When, about halfway through the funeral mass, word came that Pope Francis had personally sent a message of sympathy, it brought home the awful toll of the tragedy.
“Pope Francis, having learnt of the horrific fire in Carrickmines, expresses his deep sadness over this terrible tragedy,” Bishop Eamonn Walsh told the congregation.
“The Holy Father prays especially for those who have died, and he wishes to assure all their family members, their friends, and the whole Traveller community of his spiritual closeness and sympathy at this very difficult time.”
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The steps of the altar of the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer on Main Street in the Co Wicklow town were decked with flowers, some of them brought by young classmates of the eldest of the deceased children.
Willie Lynch, 25, his pregnant partner, Tara Gilbert, 27, their children, Jodie, 9, and Kelsey, 4, and Willie’s brother, Jimmy, 39, were visiting relatives at a halting site on Glenamuck Road when they were overcome by the fire.
Thomas Connors, 27, and Sylvia Connors, 25, and their children, Jim, 5, Christy, 2, and Mary, five months, also died. They will be buried in Gorey, Co Wexford, on Friday, after a funeral mass in Balally, south Dublin, tomorrow. Ms Connors was a sister of the Lynches. The Connors’ son Tom, 4, is expected to be released from Crumlin Children’s Hospital today.
In a reflection at the funeral mass, Ms Gilbert’s cousin, Stuart Gilbert, recalled enjoying “literally every moment” with her and her family. “Although they were only with us for a short time, they left an impression most wouldn’t leave in a hundred years,” he said, adding: “If it is any comfort to anyone, our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them.”
Father Derek Farrell, parish priest for the Travelling community, who led the service, told the congregation that he had thought it was a “bad dream” when he awoke to the news on October 10.
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“The three families, Lynch, Gilbert, and Connors, the entire Traveller community and Ireland as a nation suffered a loss which is beyond words,” he said.
Father Farrell described Ms Gilbert and Mr Lynch as a very loving and close couple. “John, Willie’s brother, put it so simply and beautifully when he said: ‘God made them, God matched them’. They stuck like glue to one another, and bonded very well.”
Mr Lynch cherished his three girls, Father Farrell added. “Kelsey stuck like a magnet to Willie, always wanted to be close to her daddy. Jodie meant the world to Willie as well.”
Ms Gilbert was remembered as someone “beautiful inside and out, always smiling, easygoing, never grumpy, a fantastic mum — her children always came first”.
Jimmy Lynch had a “heart of gold”, loved Elvis, and was always fixing things for other people. He was very good to his late mother, Mary, for whom “he was her pride and joy”.
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Father Farrell also said that there had been an instinctive outpouring of sympathy and a new, closer relationship between settled people and the Travelling community.
He said that this was “perhaps no more poignantly and particularly embodied than in the loving relationship of Tara as a young settled woman and Willie as a young Traveller man, and the family they together established so beautifully”.
John Lynch, Willie and Jimmy’s brother, thanked “the whole community and whole country” for their support.