Two men died in separate fires over the Christmas period.
A 33-year-old foreign national died as a result of a house fire at Earl Street, off Meath Street in south Dublin on Christmas morning.
The man, who has not yet been officially named, was discovered by members of Dublin Fire Brigade with serious burns to his body in an upstairs bedroom at approximately 6.50am. He was removed by ambulance to St James's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Fire brigade officers used force to gain entry to the building, where the man was found in a locked upstairs bedroom.
It is thought the likely source of the fire was an electric heater found in the room. Gardaí also attended the scene and are investigating the incident.
A 31-year-old man died in a house fire in Toomevara in the early hours of Christmas Eve. Damien O'Brien, The Crescent, Shinrone, Co Offaly, who was a native of Moneygall on the Tipperary-Offaly border, died eroute to Nenagh hospital after he was rescued from a fire at a house in Templedowney housing estate in Toomevara. The alarm was raised at 4am after a woman in the house woke up confronted with the blaze.
There was a total of five occupants in the house at the time. One other occupant was taken to Nenagh hospital suffering from smoke inhalation. A postmortem was carried out on the deceased on Christmas Eve morning.
Initial reports from the Garda forensic team suggested the fire began in a back bedroom.
Mr O'Brien, a father of a one-year-old child, was asleep in a front bedroom when the fire broke out. He had been out socialising with friends and had attended a music session at a nearby pub before returning to the house in Toomevara.