THE deaths of five adults and five children in a fire at a travellers' halting site near Dublin has left Ireland shocked.
President Higgins summed up the mood of the nation when he described the deaths as a most dreadful tragedy.
It was tragic on several levels.
On a personal level it cut short the lives of five young children within two families, as well as the lives of those who cared for those children.
For the extended families of the victims, the fire has created a gap which can never be filled and within the wider community, this tragedy represents a degree of loss which
many will find hard to comprehend.
While the fire highlighted human tragedy on an immense scale, it also drew uncomfortable attention to the often overlooked position of the travelling community within Irish society.
In many aspects of modern life, travellers often represent a social island within a rapidly evolving, multicultural Ireland.
Protected by law, but often discriminated against in practice, they largely exist outside mainstream society, in many instances through their own choice.
Travellers' groups point out that, as a consequence of this social isolation, many of them are often the hidden victims of Ireland's economic austerity.
They claim that the current housing shortage, for example, has forced many to live in overcrowded and sometimes dangerous conditions.
As the fire at the Carrickmines halting site has shown, traveller families are often crammed into prefabricated accommodation in a manner which inevitably increases
health and safety risks.
One of the few ways to bring meaning to tragedy is to ensure that the conditions which contributed to it can never be repeated. The challenge in this case is to find a
way of balancing travellers' right to cultural independence with their wider social responsibilities. In prompting Irish society to now seek that balance, the Carrickmines tragedy may prove a turning point in progressing the social integration of travellers into Irish life, while recognising and respecting their cultural identity and tradition.
It will be a difficult task. However, ten deaths give it a sense of urgency and the ten dead deserve no less.
While everyone in Ireland will offer sympathy and condolences to those who have suffered such a terrible loss, the human tragedy of Carrickmines cannot be undone. It
can only be addressed by a determination to tackle the factors on all sides which contributed to it.
While it is imperative to establish the causes of death in this tragedy, the real priority is to establish the causes of the living conditions which contributed to those deaths.
Anything less would make the Carrickmines deaths an even greater tragedy.
