Peter Fitzpatrick (Louth, Independent) | Oireachtas source

On the night of 14 February 1981, many parents' worst nightmare came true. Forty-eight young people in the prime of their lives went out to the Stardust nightclub in Artane to celebrate St. Valentine's Day but never came home. Witnesses spoke of fire exits being locked and chained, which was denied by management. There were two inquests, one tribunal of inquiry, a compensation tribunal and a number of investigations and reports, as well as countless hours spent campaigning. The families of those 48 young people who died in the nightclub fire have fought for more than four decades to get justice. Within these inquiries, the families had to relive the hauntingly traumatic and detailed injuries and causes of death of their loved ones. There was a chain around their neck and they were not able to move forward. They were left with no closure and no definitive ruling on the fire’s cause, and they rightly felt deep anger and hurt over their treatment by the State. Thankfully, after 43 years, this week a verdict of unlawful killing was returned by the jury for all 48 people who died in the disaster.

I am acutely aware that the number affected by the Stardust tragedy is far and wide. They have carried with them for 43 years the devastation the tragedy caused to a local community and to Ireland as a whole, to the survivors who bravely relived that traumatic experience by speaking their truth in their harrowing testimonies and to the first responders who found unimaginable carnage, heaps of bodies and body parts. A fleet of ambulances and taxis took the dead and dying to several Dublin hospitals, which were in danger of becoming overwhelmed by casualties. It was a mass death of innocents, exacerbated by an exhausting battle for answers by those left behind.

Lax fire laws under which the nightclub was inspected in 1980 were drawn up under an Act of 1890. There is no denying that the persistent failure of successive governments to deal with outdated legislation in relation to fire safety in buildings to which the public had access, notably discos, hotels, pubs and nightclubs, led to the tragedy. The outdated legislation applicable at the time did not place the responsibility on the owners of these places.

As a result fire exit doors could be obstructed and windows barred for security reasons. In addition, far too few personnel in the fire services or the local authorities were fully qualified to carry out thorough inspections of the buildings to ensure fire safety requirements were carried out. The safety regulations then in force had not been amended to take account of a new range of plastic products such as polystyrene and their hazardous potential.

The hands-off approach was driven by the ideology that property is a private matter, even though public safety is clearly a public matter. Even now we only have to look at how issues around mica and pyrite have fallen back under the public purse. These regulatory failures were repeated time after time and there was no accountability, only loss. We have a very weak system of control but we should have good standards and proper enforcement. This needs to change immediately. The Government needs to first look at existing regulations in relation to safety and accountability. A working group that examined defects in housing in 2022 found a lack of fire safety material, structural defects and water ingress are likely to affect up to 80% of apartments and duplexes built between 1991 and 2013 in the Celtic tiger era. This equates to between 62,500 and 100,000 homes. The problem is that fire certs are being approved and granted to developers based on submitted plans. No further inspection or follow-up is carried out to ensure compliance with plans. Defective construction work is a breach of building contracts, yet developers commonly claim liquidation and set up new companies with no accountability. The current legislation on redress schemes such as the pyrite resolution board should also be amended to advance redress more rapidly.

Today, however, the Government needs to provide a genuine, meaningful and unequivocal State apology to the families of victims and survivors of the Stardust tragedy. Perhaps seeing justice being done would help a little and let the victims rest in peace at last, but it has been a long time coming. As a parent and as a grandparent I extend my enormous gratitude to the families, the friends and all the people involved for getting us here today.

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