Gardaí are treating a fire at an unoccupied house in Ennis, Co Clare, last night as malicious.
The alarm was raised shortly before midnight when the fire brigade was alerted to a car fire outside a house at St Anne's Terrace on Clonroad in Ennis.
On arrival, fire crews discovered that a separate fire was raging at the back of the house.
Six units of the fire service from Ennis and Shannon attended the incident and took several hours to vent the block of houses and disperse the smoke.
The occupants of four homes had to be evacuated after smoke quickly spread through the terrace. No one was injured in the incident.
The house where the fire was started was unoccupied at the time, while a car parked in the driveway was destroyed in the attack.
The scene remains sealed off this morning pending completion of a technical examination.
