Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I want to start by quoting the headline of the article by Kitty Holland on "The full story of the Stardust fire", which is, "Jesus Christ, the doors are locked". That is what the survivors from the Stardust fire have been saying for more than 40 years. They were not believed. They were ignored and, as Antoinette Keegan has said, they have been systematically abused by the Irish establishment for the past 43 years.

I welcome to the Visitors Gallery all the families of those who lost loved ones. I welcome all those injured in the fire who carry the physical and mental pain of that night 43 years ago. I am glad the families and the parents have fought for so long and hard and never gave up. They have campaigned for truth and justice. They are here today having earned the rightful verdict of unlawful killing and this apology from the State so we can remember those who have passed in the last 43 years. I salute you. This is the day to remember the 48 who died, the up to 200 injured and the more than 600 who escaped with their lives, as well as the workers in the Stardust, the emergency service workers and the taxi men who drove people from the Stardust to hospitals. They have carried the horrific memories of that night and it is time they were vindicated.

I am very proud of this community where I come from. I, my brothers and my friends practically lived in the Stardust after it opened in 1978. It was the place to go and all the working-class kids in the area were there as often as possible. My brother, Desmond Collins, who was 17 years of age, was in the Stardust that night. I have never publicly stated this as he has been very private about his experience, and only on the anniversary every year would he ring up to say, “It’s that time of year again.” I have spoken to him since the inquest verdict and he opened up a bit about that night. He said that he and his pals were sitting in front of Paul Wade. Paul was our neighbour from across the road. Paul died that night and was only identified in 2007. In his pen portrait at the inquest, his brother Tony's son, Emmet, read the portrait of Paul. Tony was in the Stardust that night as well but survived. The family, like every other family, were devastated. Their mam and dad never recovered. Des recounted the terror and chaos in the venue, the people clambering over the seats and other people trying to get out - the darkness, the heat, the horror. He said he remembered the barman who eventually got the fire exit next to the bar near the stage open, and that was the exit that he got out by – exit 4. After the verdict last week, he said a weight had been taken off his shoulders. However, what happened in the past 43 years should never have happened.

All the victims need to be remembered and apologised to today, as well as the community that had to live with the Keane tribunal of inquiry verdict, that the most probable cause was arson, until 2009, 28 years later. This was a class issue. I felt it and the community felt it. I do not believe it would have taken 43 years to reach a verdict of unlawful killing if it had happened in a more affluent area.

I want to say to the families and campaigners that they are a beacon of light to all those campaigners who are seeking truth and justice. I say to the Taoiseach that anything done on this issue must be done hand in hand with the families and survivors.

I want to read a piece sent to me by Tommy Broughan, who was a TD for the community for 28 years and worked tirelessly to support and fight for the victims and their families:

February 14th,1981 - 48 dead, 214 injured (over 80 seriously) out of 840 Stardust patrons ... Deep anguish and grief of Coolock and the whole Northside was hugely exacerbated by the conclusion of the Keane Tribunal Report in 1982. While most of the conclusion indicated that the cause of the fire would 'never be known', the Keane Report suddenly ended by saying the fire was most probably caused by arson. A terrible slur was thus cast on the 48 young victims and the other Stardust.

In the aftermath, the traumatised families, led by John and Chrissie Keegan, formed the Stardust Victims Committee. After John's sad and untimely death, Chrissie and her brilliant daughter, Antoinette, Gertie Barrett, Brid McDermott, Eugene Kelly, Willie Mulvey and Jimmy Dunne were among the small core group which valiantly carried on this decades-long struggle. Their campaign for a small redress scheme was successful but was dwarfed by the £580,000-plus awarded to the Stardust owner based on Keane's totally erroneous final conclusion that the probable cause was arson.

Patrick Butterly wrote in his memoir, From Radishes to Riches, that the Butterlys were all Fianna Fáilers. He was a member of the party’s fundraising machine, Taca, in the 1970s and 1980s. He said that what you had these people for was to get things done. If you wanted someone who could do something, you asked them. This was not lost on the people in our community.

From 1986 to 1993, the Stardust Victims Committee, supported by Tommy Broughan, then a councillor, led a long struggle to force the then Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, to grant Dublin Corporation £500,000 to build the beautiful Stardust Memorial Park in Bonnybrook, the central Coolock parish. Over the next decade or more, Tommy Broughan constantly raised the issue of establishing a new tribunal of inquiry to revisit the work and conclusions of the Keane report. His parliamentary questions and Adjournment debates were underpinned by the work of a number of outstanding Irish journalists. In 2001, two brilliant young Northside People journalists, Tony McCullagh and Neil Fetherstonhaugh, published a seminal book on the Stardust tragedy, They Never Came Home - The Stardust Story. This was the first study to directly challenge Keane and focus on the grossly deficient electrical fittings of the Stardust.

The first decade of this century was a long struggle led by Chrissie and Antoinette Keegan to revisit Keane and finally correct the appalling conclusion of that report. A local northside scientist, Ms. Geraldine Foy, did important work to try to locate the true cause of the fire and a report, entitled Nothing But the Truth, was submitted to then Minister for Justice, now Senator Michael McDowell, in 2006. Finally, Mr. Paul Coffey, now Mr. Justice Coffey, was appointed by the Ahern Government to carry out a review of new evidence on the Stardust. The subsequent 2009 Coffey report demolished the conclusion of the Keane report, which Coffey said was simply a hypothesis and totally exonerated the 48 young victims and the other Stardust attendees. The Dáil then passed a legal adjustment to the Keane report and the then Deputy Broughan read the 48 names of the Stardust victims into the Dáil record.

Remarkably, in an earlier, unpublished draft of this report, Mr. Justice Coffey indicated that a new tribunal was the best way forward. However, this was quashed by the Cowen Fianna Fáil Government. In the 2011 general election, Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore gave commitments to re-establish a tribunal of enquiry, but these commitments were cruelly broken by the subsequent austerity Governments up to 2020. In 2014, the current Tánaiste, Deputy Micheál Martin, committed to a new tribunal. However, despite his full support for the Governments led by Enda Kenny and Deputy Varadkar, he also refused to insist on a new tribunal.

On every anniversary of the Stardust tragedy up to 2019, Deputy Broughan organised a Dáil debate in support of the Stardust Victims and Relatives Committee for a new tribunal or commission of investigation under the 2004 Act. This culminated with a motion in January 2017 calling for such a commission. This was defeated by 94 votes to 50, with Fine Gael, including the Taoiseach, those in Fianna Fáil and then Minister of State Finian McGrath, of Dublin Bay North, voting against. The then Deputy Broughan immediately called for the reopening of the Stardust inquest as the best alternative to a new commission of investigation. He contacted the Senior Dublin City Coroner, Dr. Myra Cullinane, in October 2016 and asked that the 1981 inquest be reopened. She replied in 2017 that she had no jurisdiction to reopen the earlier inquest by the then city coroner Professor Patrick Bofin. Mr. Broughan then reminded the coroner of the reopening of the inquest into the victims of the Hillsborough tragedy in the UK and of the fact that there was no cause of death given on the death certificates of the 48 tragic victims of the Stardust.

Later in 2017, the minority Government under Deputy Varadkar appointed the former Deputy for Dublin North East and retired judge Pat McCartan to carry out a review of new evidence unearthed by the Stardust committee, journalists and fire experts to see if a commission of investigation or a reopened inquest would be justified. Mr. Justice McCartan decided that they would not be justified, and former Deputy Broughan commented that the judge had made a clear mistake by ignoring developments made over in the forensic science of investigating fires the previous four decades.

In 2018, Mr. Broughan moved a motion again calling for the reopening of the Stardust inquest. In 2018 and 2019, the Stardust committee led an historic and massive nationwide campaign. Among other things, this involved collecting almost 50,000 signatures of support from citizens to reopen the inquest. Finally, the then Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, asked the then Attorney General Séamus Woulfe to review the issue. In September 2019, the Attorney General finally agreed to ask the city coroner to reopen the Stardust inquest.

Tommy Broughan has stated that the verdict of unlawful killing delivered by the Stardust inquest jury last week was widely anticipated by those who attended the inquest at the Rotunda Hospital or followed it on Zoom. I thank the city coroner for the very sensitive and legally rigorous conduct of the inquest. All those who called for justice for the 48 victims, the survivors and their families are also very grateful to solicitor Darragh Mackin of Phoenix Law and his team of barristers for their presentation of the Stardust families' case at the inquest. We also remember the support of Charlie Bird and the great musician Christy Moore, fire expert Tony Gillick, Professor Michael Delichatsios of the University of Ulster and Paul Giblin of the Grenfell fire tragedy campaigners. Dr. Will Hutchinson, a fire expert, who gave the key forensic evidence to the inquest must also be greatly commended. Most of all, this afternoon we salute Antoinette, her late Mam, Chrissie, her Dad, John, Gertie and Bríd who are the heroes of 43 years of desperate struggle. Their total vindication in the inquest jury's verdict is a huge contribution to Irish democracy and an inspiration to all other groups fighting for social justice in this country.

It is clearly incumbent on An Garda Síochána to urgently investigate and re-examine the performance of the owner and operator of the Stardust nightclub in light of the evidence heard at the second Stardust inquest. It seems clear that a file will be prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions, DPP. The performance of the planning, fire safety and building regulator, namely Dublin City Council, must also face deep scrutiny by an Garda Síochána and the DPP. The enduring grief of their loss will never abate in Coolock, but at least now they may truly rest in peace.

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