Everything about next Friday will be “difficult”, says Ben Lynch.

It marks the 10th anniversary of the day he lost eight family members in the Carrickmines fire tragedy. In the early hours of October 10th, 2015, a fire engulfed a mobile home at a temporary halting site on the Glenamuck Road in Carrickmines, south Co Dublin.

Ten people, including five children, were killed in what remains the worst fire tragedy since the 1981 Stardust nightclub disaster that killed 48.

A 2019 inquest found the Carrickmines fire started in an overheated chip-pan. All 10 died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning.

“It will all bring back a lot of memories,” says Lynch of the anniversary, speaking at his home in Bray, Co Wicklow.

“You don’t want to think about this all the time, but I do think about them every day. It’s hard to believe so many years have passed and it feels like it was only yesterday. It is still very hard.”

Ben lost siblings, nieces and nephews in the fire.

Two brothers, Jimmy (39) and Willy (25), and a sister, Sylvia (30), died that night. Thomas Connors (27), Sylvia’s husband, and the couple’s three children – Jim (5), Christy (3) and six-month-old Mary – also died, alongside Willy’s partner, Tara Gilbert, her daughter, Jodie (9), and their daughter, Kelsey (4).

A plaque in memory of family members who died in the fire. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw

Harry Gilbert lives just across from the Lynch family home; his daughter Tara died – she was 14 weeks pregnant – as well as two of his grandchildren.

Three years later the widower lost his re