![\"Mary](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/5INWFVHSKBCT3FFPDM4VQ2SM3Q.jpg\")
Mary Holt (60) and Tadhg Farrell (4), who died in a house fire in Edenderry, Co Offaly. Photographs: Families of deceased <\/p>\nA man in his 20s has appeared in court in relation to a fire that resulted in the deaths of a boy and his great-aunt in Co Offaly last December. <\/p>\n
Michael Dunne (22), with an address in Co Kildare, was charged with two offences at a special sitting of Tullamore District Court on Friday evening.<\/p>\n
He is accused of criminal damage and endangerment arising out of the fire which led to the deaths of 60-year-old Mary Holt and four-year-old Tadhg Farrell at a house in Castleview Park in Edenderry on December 6th. <\/p>\n
Judge Andrew Cody granted reporting restrictions around the disclosure of Dunne\u2019s full address.<\/p>\n
Det Garda Tom Dunne, of Tullamore Garda station, told the court he had charged Dunne with the two offences at 1.08pm on Friday. <\/p>\n
He said the accused man made no reply to the first charge of criminal damage by arson. When told of the charge of endangerment, he said Dunne replied: \u201cI am sorry.\u201d <\/p>\n
During the short hearing, the accused\u2019s barrister, Doireann McDonagh, asked that anonymity be granted to the defendant\u2019s legal team due to what she described as a \u201ccontentious and dangerous local feud\u201d. <\/p>\n
The judge denied the request and said he had not come across an application like that before. <\/p>\n
Mary Holt (60) and Tadhg Farrell (4), who died in a house fire in Edenderry, Co Offaly. Photographs: Families of deceased <\/p>\n
There was no application for bail. Dunne was remanded in custody to appear before the same court by videolink next Wednesday. <\/p>\n
Earlier this week, garda\u00ed arrested four people in relation to the suspected arson attack. One man in his 30s, another in his 20s and a teenager remain in Garda custody. They are being detained at Garda stations in the midlands under Section 50 of the Criminal Justice Act 2007. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man in his 20s has appeared in court in relation to a fire that resulted in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,8286,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-427607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-offaly","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}