Forensic experts will this morning examine the scene of a house fire in Castlemaine, Co Kerry, in which three people, a mother and father and their 24-year-old son, lost their lives yesterday morning.
The scene of the fire was yesterday preserved after being dampened down and made secure.
The three people were named locally as John and Mary Daly (57), and their son Shane Daly.
Three other members of the family, two daughters and an older son, Mr James Daly (29), were not in the house at the time. Mr James Daly had gone to Dublin to attend the All-Ireland football final between Kerry and Armagh. He returned home yesterday afternoon.
Flames were spotted by a passing bus driver who reported the matter to the Garda shortly after 8.30 a.m. The two-storey farmhouse is less than a mile from Castlemaine in the townland of Annagh on the main Dingle road.
Set well back from the road at the end of a private entrance, the farmhouse is well known to passersby on the main Killarney to Dingle road because of its distinctive red-orange roof sheds and tall Scots pine trees with the Slieve Mish mountains in the background.
A Kerry jersey yesterday hung on the washing line and a large Kerry flag remained on the well-kept lawn in front of the roses alongside the fire engines.
Two units of the fire service in Kerry, with 12 fire officers, from the Tralee and Killorglin fire service arrived on the scene but the farmhouse was already in flames.
The roof had partially collapsed when the first unit reached the house shortly after being notified.
"There was an inferno, not smoke but flames," said Mr Donal Guerin, assistant chief fire officer and the senior officer at the scene yesterday.
Fire officers had no idea what caused the fire. Although an old farmhouse, it appeared to have been recently done up with a new tile roof and newly plastered walls, Mr Guerin said. The fire appeared to have started in the centre of the house, either in the sitting room or in an upstairs bedroom.
The fire was confined to the Daly home. An adjoining house, which was not occupied, was saved.
The bodies of the three people were removed by ambulance, escorted by a Garda car, and taken to Tralee General Hospital shortly after 1 p.m.
Garda superintendent Mr Pat O'Sullivan, who was at the scene since early in the morning, said: "This is a sad and tragic accident in which three people lost their lives and our thoughts at the moment are with the family and relatives of the deceased."
The Daly family are well-known in the area and have relations throughout the mid-Kerry area as well as in Tralee, where Mrs Daly's elderly mother lives.
Many people from Castlemaine were at the All-Ireland yesterday but word spread quickly. Ms Kay Dowling of the post office in Casltemaine said she received numerous phone calls yesterday morning from concerned neighbours and relatives.
The Dalys were quiet people and well-liked. Shane worked on the farm but he was well-known in the village because he worked in Griffin's bar when he was a student.
"There is an awful doom and gloom over the parish. He was a lovely boy," Ms Dowling said.
Neighbours, when they became aware of the fire, ran quickly to the farmhouse and began throwing stones at the windows to alert the people inside but the fire was out of control, said Mr Gerard O'Dowd, a neighbour and one of the first to arrive on the scene.