Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I welcome the motion and the distinguished visitors to the Gallery. The Coffey report is a vindication of the heroic and valiant 28-year campaign by the Stardust families to achieve some level of justice for their loved ones and for the survivors of the 1981 Stardust inferno. I especially welcome two of the recommendations, namely: "that the cause of the fire is unknown and that none of the persons present on the night of the fire can be held responsible for it", and on the urgent need to establish "a committee to monitor the counselling and medical needs of the survivors and the bereaved."

It has been a very long and hard struggle for the Stardust Victims and Relatives Committee. Progress to this point has been the result of a tremendous effort on behalf of the Stardust victims and relatives. I pay particular tribute to the work of Ms Christine Keegan, Ms Antoinette Keegan, Ms Gertrude Barrett and Ms Bríd McDermott of the Stardust Victims and Relatives Committee without whom the Coffey report would never have come about.

The 1981 Stardust tragedy was the worst fire disaster in the history of this State. On that fateful night, 48 young people, predominantly from Bonnybrook, Kilmore, Coolock, Darndale, Kilbarrack, Raheny and Donaghmede, went out for the night socialising and so tragically never returned home to their families. The impact of the Stardust disaster on these communities, throughout Dublin and the rest of the country was devastating.

Some families lost two or three of their beloved sons and daughters. On some streets every second house had a family connection to one of the tragic victims or indeed survivors of the inferno. The scars of that night are deeply etched across those communities and have been made worse by the appalling and, at times, almost inhuman way that the Stardust victims and relatives have been treated in the 28 years since the disaster.

The abandonment of the Stardust victims and their relatives by the State and the refusal to forensically investigate every aspect of what really happened on that tragic night is without doubt one of the most shameful and unjust episodes in our country's entire history and ranks with some of the most serious miscarriages of justice ever.

In the mid-1980s survivors and the bereaved received very modest compensation payments. Basic things such as counselling services for the survivors and the bereaved or ongoing medical monitoring for those who had been severely injured on the night of the fire were never made available. The horrific deaths and injuries of that terrible night were also compounded by the conclusions of the flawed Keane tribunal report. The conclusion contained in that report that arson was the most probable cause of the 1981 fire was particularly offensive for the Stardust survivors and relatives. They rightly felt that this cast a slur on their blameless loved ones who had innocently gone out for a night and ended up in the inferno at the Stardust club. A key element of the Stardust families' campaign, which has been vindicated in this report, has always been to have this unsafe and indefensible conclusion rejected.

The Labour Party strongly welcomes the conclusions in the Coffey report which clearly acknowledges that the original Keane tribunal conclusion that arson was the cause of the fire is unsound and unsafe and must be officially and publicly rejected. Mr. Coffey's key recommendation that the Government should correct the public record "by placing on the record of the Dáil and Seanad an acknowledgement of the Tribunal's findings that there is no evidence that the fire was started deliberately and that the cause of the fire is unknown" provides a full vindication of the long campaign of the victims' and relatives' committee.

The core of Mr. Coffey's report therefore adopts and accepts one of the long-standing key arguments of the Stardust relatives' and victims' committee "that the Tribunal's finding of fact that the fire was probably caused deliberately is based on hypothesis and not established by evidence and is for that reason inherently unsatisfactory". However, we regret that the fifth part of the motion does not clearly apologise for the grief and distress suffered by the relatives and survivors because of the Keane tribunal finding.

The second most critical recommendation of the Coffey report relates to the establishment of a committee to finally monitor the progress of the victims and their relatives and to ensure that counselling and medical treatment where necessary and appropriate are afforded to the survivors and the bereaved at the expense of the State. The horrendous injustice that is the Stardust disaster and its aftermath is crystallised in the fact that it took an astonishing 28 years for the Government to agree to a such a basic measure to address the medical and psychological needs of the Stardust survivors and the bereaved.

Some Stardust survivors and relatives may be disappointed that a new inquiry has not been recommended in the report. The Labour Party shares some of this disappointment, but, as I have said, we are happy that the key finding of the Keane tribunal has been overturned.

I wish to finish, as did Deputy Broughan in the other House, by quoting the words of Laurence Binyon on its First Memorial Stone in Beaumont Hospital:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.