Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In 1981, I was head of Sinn Féin youth. I think I have said this previously in the House in 2017. I remember clearly the events of that time, when I issued a statement. I went into a phone box, put in the change and rang The Irish Press. Phone boxes do not exist any more, and nor does The Irish Press. I remember it clearly, even if I do not remember where I was when I heard the news of what had happened. Last week, I was privileged to go into the court and I saw the pictures of the victims on the wall. Like everyone else in the court, I did not really know what the outcome was going to be, given there had been so many false dawns. When the names were being read out, it was like hammer blows as we listened to one after another. Then we heard how they had died. The judge then read out the verdict and it was a relief for everyone in the room. I will never forget it. I have talked to journalists and they were crying. I was crying, the families were crying and the jury were crying. Even the judge was probably crying. They were cries of relief but also of sadness for all those wasted years that families have had to go through.

There is not much time to talk about the incident but I remember young people being arrested that night. They had been trying to break down the doors. Some of them had fire axes they had got from firemen. There was one young person who rammed a car into the toilet wall to try to get people out. The doors had been locked with chains and they could not get out. I remember listening to Seán Reinhardt on the radio, whom I knew years ago and who used to be the secretary to the group. He was talking about that night, which he survived with severe burns, and about the gasps when the lights went out and the screams that followed. For anyone of that generation, those screams will probably live with us, and clearly with the victims' families, forever. When I spoke in the Chamber about this in 2017, one of my constituents said to me that their family had always talked the fact no one had ever been prosecuted and nothing had ever happened, whereas the owners of the nightclub had been compensated.

I have spoken for too long, but I am really happy for the families here today. I hope they will find some solace in what they have heard from the Taoiseach. Others have mentioned other victims and people we have apologised to belatedly. I think we need collectively to look at how we treat victims and their families. Stardust changed a generation. We will never be the same. I will never be able to go into a nightclub or a pub cellar without looking to see whether there are chains on the doors. I have been abroad and that is the first thing I look for. If I am somewhere strange, I will always look out for that. I was not in the Stardust but I am from that generation. It has changed us, I hope for the better, but we need to look at those regulations and at why they were not implemented. I heard in court about the fireball that went up because of the fire regulations that had not been followed. As I said, the people who owned the nightclub were compensated, and the big question that hangs over today is why nobody was prosecuted.

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