A car park owned by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is to be used as temporary accommodation for the surviving families of the Carrickmines fire, in which ten people died.

The council has abandoned plans to locate a temporary halting site for the fire survivors in a Carrickmines cul-de-sac.

In a statement the council said it had selected a new site in a car park it owns beside the Ballyogan Works Depot, which has its own private access road.

It said it had come to the decision to avoid legal challenges because it was faced with the "untenable and unacceptable situation" that the families would have nowhere to live from this weekend.

The development follows discussions between council officials and residents of Rockville Drive, the site originally planned as a temporary location for an emergency halting site, which failed to lead to agreement.

Residents of Rockville Drive were unhappy with what they felt was a lack of consultation by the council on the plans to rehouse those made homeless by the fire.

The council has said the new site is not ideal and lacked the basic services that would have been available in Rockville Drive.

It says the new site is a 15-minute walk from where the family were located.

The council said the decision to facilitate the family with emergency accommodation at the Ballyogan site was made with great reluctance.

"The family has suffered enormous loss and our absolute priority was to ensure accommodation was provided to the surviving members of the tragedy by this weekend.

"We had worked hard and hoped to proceed with the more suitable, fully serviced Rockville Drive site but ultimately an agreement was not possible within the time frame."

The Pavee Point Traveller and Roma Centre group said this evening that it is extremely disappointed that the talks to accommodate the bereaved Traveller families at the Carrickmines cul-de-sac have failed.

In a statement this evening, Pavee Point said: "Once again Travellers' rights to a decent place to live come second place to the demands of the majority population."

The group reiterated its call for the establishment of a Traveller Agency "to monitor, co-ordinate and where appropriate enforce the implementation of Government policy on Travellers in the areas of accommodation, health, education, equality and employment".

Residents welcome council's decision

A statement on behalf of residents of Rockville Drive and Glenamuck Cottages said they welcomed the decision.

"We welcome the decision today by Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council to locate a temporary halting site for survivors of the tragic fire at Glenamuck Road on a site owned by the council which is adjacent to the Council's Ballyogan premises," the statement read.

"We hope that the council can now move quickly to provide the survivors of this awful tragedy with safe accommodation at this location and that the survivors can be given the space and support they need to grieve.

"Like everybody else in this country, the residents of Rockville Drive and Glenamuck Cottages were shocked at the devastation caused by the fire at the Glenamuck Road halting site.

"Our thoughts and prayers go to the victims of this appalling tragedy and, particularly, to the survivors and their families and friends. We can only imagine the pain and suffering that they are going through.

"We appreciate the difficult situation in which Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council found themselves in trying to arrive at appropriate temporary accommodation. At all times our concern was that the proposed location in the narrow cul-de-sac at Rockville Drive was unsuitable for use as a halting site.

"It is our hope that the events of the last week will prompt a considered debate about Traveller accommodation across the country. Clearly there are serious inadequacies in the standard of accommodation provided.

"We would welcome the opportunity to contribute constructively to that debate at an appropriate time in the future," the statement added.