An inquest into the death of a woman and her three-year-old son has heard that a smoke alarm in their house was wired incorrectly.
The father of 25-year-old Marion Moran who died along with her three-year-old son in a house fire has appealed for homeowners and builders to ensure smoke alarms are correctly wired.
Marion and her son Brandon had been living in a social housing development in the Farndreg Estate, Dundalk when a fire broke out in their home in April 2005.
Today the inquest into their deaths heard about the efforts neighbours made to try and rescue them on the morning of 2 April 2005 after neighbours were alerted by Brandon’s screaming.
They broke a window and following a frantic search in the smoke-filled house they found him.
His mother was found a short while later.
However, six days later Brandon died from his injuries in Crumlin Children's Hospital. A few hours later Marion also died.
Today's inquest was told by retired Det Garda Michael O'Driscoll, that he believed the fire started in the kitchen when the cooker had been left on.
He said that he had two fire alarms from the house tested.
One was too badly damaged, while the other did not work because it apparently had been wired incorrectly causing a transistor to burn out.
It appeared to him, he said, that both the live and the neutral wires were the same colour meaning it would have been very difficult to know which was which when the alarm was being installed.
The Coroner, Ronan Maguire, recorded a verdict of accidental death in both cases, due to the effects of smoke inhalation.
He praised the neighbours and gardaí for their ‘heroic actions’ in trying to rescue Brandon and Marion.
However, he said it was incredible that the wiring was not colour coded making mis-wiring easy to occur that in turn made the smoke alarm useless from the minute it was switched on.
Following the inquest Marion's father, Derek, urged people to consider donating the organs of their deceased loved ones.
Three people had benefitted from Marion's donated organs and this, Mr Moran said, had been of tremendous comfort to the family in their grief.
