You were failed by the State and it rubbed salt in your terrible wounds
Stardust families welcome Taoiseach’s apology over tragedy
THE Taoiseach has delivered a long-awaited apology to the victims, survivors and families of the Stardust fire, saying they were failed by the State, which had ‘rubbed salt in their terrible wounds’.
Forty-eight people were killed when the blaze ripped through the north Dublin nightclub on Valentine’s Day in 1981.
After a four-decade campaign for justice, last week an inquest found the victims had been unlawfully killed.
Yesterday, Simon Harris said the State failed the families when ‘you needed us the most’. The Dáil rose to its feet to welcome the Stardust families, who were gathered in the public gallery.
‘I know there have been many times when you thought this day would never come,’ Mr Harris told them. ‘I know you were forced to endure a living nightmare which began when your loved ones were snatched from you in a devastating fire.
‘Their unfinished stories became your story: the defining story of your lives and the lives of your
‘We should have stood with you’
parents and other family members who left this life before ever seeing justice.
‘I am deeply sorry you were made to fight for so long that they went to their graves never knowing the truth.
‘Today, we say formally, and without any equivocation, we are sorry. From the very beginning we should have stood with you, but instead we forced you to stand against us.’
Mr Harris said the State rubbed ‘salt in their terrible wounds’ and hoped the apology in the Dáil helps the families heal.
‘I truly hope the days since last Thursday have marked a turning point and here today in Dáil Eireann we finally begin to put things right, to bring you in from the cold and end the neglect of 43 years waiting and fighting for the only thing you ever wanted: the truth,’ he said. ‘Nothing else. No other agenda, just the truth.’
He continued: ‘I am so deeply sorry your first bid for justice ended with suspicion being cast on those who had died or survived on that catastrophic night, with your pain and your grief compounded by stigma and rejection.
‘Families were forced to fight for decades to obtain the vindication that you won last Thursday when the inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing in the case of your 48 family members.
‘For all of this, as Taoiseach on behalf of this State, I apologise unreservedly to all the families of the Stardust victims and all the survivors for the hurt done to them and for the profoundly painful years of struggle for the truth.’
Green Party leader Eamon Ryan called it an ‘incredibly important day’ for the families.
‘The organs of the Irish State didn’t respond when repeatedly confronted by contradictory evidence,’ Mr Ryan said. ‘It’s a sobering indictment of our integrity as a nation and one we must reflect upon.’
A previous finding in 1982 said the fire had been started deliberately, a theory the families never accepted. That ruling was dismissed in 2009, leading to the latest inquests for the victims, who were aged from 16 to 27 and mostly came from the surrounding north Dublin area.
Last Thursday, the inquest jury returned a verdict that all 48 victims were unlawfully killed. A majority decision found the blaze was caused by an electrical fault in the hot press of the bar.
Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien said it is fitting for the Dáil to apologise. ‘In responding to the Stardust tragedy, our State did not live up to the principles of justice, its core values, nor on the decency that we owe every person,’ the Dublin Fingal TD said.
‘The victims, their families, their friends and their community were let down.’
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said the ‘big lie’ that the fire had been arson spread soon after the blaze. ‘It was a lie repeated over and over. It smeared, it criminalised the victims and survivors suggesting that one of their number was responsible,’ she said. ‘To this day those families and survivors still ask who crafted that lie. Who spun it, who spread it and why?’
Lisa Lawlor, who was 17 months old when her parents Francis and Maureen Lawlor died in the fire, said that she was ‘very, very happy’ with the Taoiseach’s apology.
Ms Lawlor carried 49 red roses into the Dáil to represent the victims as well as the unborn baby of Caroline Carey, who was fourand-a-half months pregnant when she died.
‘I am very honoured to be here. We have waited so long for this and have waited so long for something like this, especially me the Stardust baby, the only orphan,’ Ms Lawlor said.
‘Losing both of them on the one night has been horrific. I can’t describe it to you but I am vindicated and I know they are and I know they are around me.’
She said that Mr Harris struck the right tone with his speech. ‘We will discuss with our lawyers the next move, but I am very happy with today,’ she said.
Damien Keegan, brother of victims Mary and Martina Keegan, said it was a ‘bittersweet’ day.
He said members of their family ‘broke down’ when their mother Christine Keegan, who died in 2020 and was a leading campaigner for the families, was mentioned in the Dáil statements.
He said his fifth birthday was in the April after the tragedy.
‘All I knew growing up throughout my whole life was looking at my mother fighting for justice,’ he said. ‘The State has done absolutely nothing so far, apart from the apology for us.
‘Follow it up and show us what you mean, you’re sorry. Show us your commitment, what you’re saying in there you’re going to do for us. Show us.’
He said Mr Harris gave a ‘good apology’ and seems ‘genuine’.
Patricia Dunne, whose brother Brian Hobbs died in the fire, described the apology as ‘good, but not great’. She said: ‘I am not majorly excited, I’m not majorly upset, it was good but not great.
‘Hard enough going at times. The Taoiseach was fine. Mary Lou was extremely brilliant. She got a round of applause from all the families.
‘I told the Taoiseach on Saturday he needed to read all the pen portraits himself, not his scripts, to understand where we were coming from and to feel my hurt, which I think he did.
‘We will see how the next few days pan out and have they taken it fully on board, or are some of them going through the motions again... We will see how it goes. We have had promises for years.’
‘It has been horrific’