Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate on this historic motion. I also warmly welcome the many Stardust survivors and family members who are present in the Public Gallery to finally witness the correction of the official public record on what happened at the Stardust nightclub in Artane almost 28 years ago, when 48 young people so tragically lost their lives. This motion is a vindication of the heroic and valiant nearly 28-year campaign on the part of the Stardust families to achieve some level of justice for their loved ones and for the survivors of the inferno which occurred at the nightclub in 1981.

I have already warmly welcomed two critical recommendations in the report undertaken by Mr. Paul Coffey, SC, on the correction of the public record on the 1981 Stardust disaster to acknowledge "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 bereaved".

It has been a long and difficult struggle for the Stardust victims' and relatives' committee. Every step forward in this search for justice and truth has been the result of tenacious and ferocious effort on the part of the victims and relatives, often in the face of appalling stonewalling and seeming duplicity by successive Fianna Fáil-led Governments. In late 2006 and early 2007, the positive identification of the five remaining unidentified victims of the Stardust tragedy at St. Fintan's Cemetery, Sutton, was another major victory in the victims and relatives long and courageous campaign.

I again pay public tribute to the outstanding leadership shown by Ms Christine Keegan, Ms Antoinette Keegan, Ms Gertrude Barrett and Ms Brid McDermott of the Stardust victims' and relatives' committee. Without these women, the Coffey report and tonight's quashing of the Keane conclusion of arson would never have come about.

The 1981 Stardust tragedy was the worst fire disaster in the history of the State. On St. Valentine's night of that year, 48 young people predominantly from parishes — Bonnybrook, Kilmore, Coolock, Darndale, Kilbarrack, Raheny and Donaghmede — across my constituency of Dublin North-East and my city ward of Artane went out for the night to socialise, as young people throughout the world often do, and tragically never returned home to their families.

The impact of the Stardust disaster on communities throughout Dublin North-East and the Artane ward was indescribably 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 survivors of the events that occurred on St. Valentine's night 1981. The scars relating to what happened that night are still deeply etched across our community and have been made worse by the appallingly shabby and at times almost inhuman way 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 investigate forensically 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. In the mid-1980s, survivors and the bereaved received very modest compensation payments. Even worse, basic facilities 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 provided or made available.

Over 21 years ago, I was involved in the titanic struggle on the part of the Stardust victims' and relatives' committee to establish the Stardust Memorial Park in Coolock to commemorate the victims of the disaster. As secretary of the Bonnybrook parish committee, I joined Ms Chrissie Keegan, Ms Antoinette Keegan, Ms Barrett, Mr. Willie Mulvey, Mr. Jimmy Dunne and others on the picket line outside the office of the then Taoiseach, Charles Haughey. As a result of this, we were eventually given a grant of £500,000 by what was then Dublin Corporation.

The horrific deaths and injuries of that terrible night were also compounded by the conclusions of the wholly flawed Keane report. The conclusion that arson was the most probable cause of the 1981 fire was particularly grievous and offensive for the Stardust survivors and relatives who rightly felt this cast a completely unacceptable slur on their blameless loved ones who had innocently gone out for the night and ended up in a nightmarish inferno at the Stardust. A key element of the Stardust families' campaign, which has been vindicated tonight, has therefore always been to have this unsafe and indefensible conclusion rejected and expunged from the public record.

In the Dáil debate in February 2006, I called the conclusions of the original Keane tribunal report into the Stardust disaster "untrustworthy, unfair and unsafe". I still believe that is the case and over the years outstanding pieces of investigative work by the Stardust victims' committee and its technical adviser, Ms Geraldine Foy, and by various journalists, especially the landmark book, They Never Came Home: The Stardust Story, by our distinguished northside journalists Tony McCullogh and Neil Fetherstonhaugh, have built up a case that has culminated in the Coffey report and today's correction of the official record of the State.

In 2001, the publication of They Never Came Home: The Stardust Story, by Tony McCullogh and Neil Fetherstonhaugh, was a catalyst in the re-examination of Mr. Justice Keane's conclusions. The book, which got its title from a song by Christy Moore, a great supporter of the Stardust relatives, concluded that the fire was not malicious and had possibly started in the roof space and not in the seats in the west alcove.

In 2004, the Stardust victims' committee commissioned a local scientist, Ms Geraldine Foy, to revisit the 1982 Keane tribunal report and to collate all of the new evidence that had come to light from various media and professional investigations into the disaster. The subsequent paper by Ms Foy forensically demolished the Keane report conclusion that the fire was begun deliberately.

The report also published compelling evidence that the Keane conclusion on the location of the origin of the fire was patently unsound. Indeed, Ms Foy's report clearly showed that the Keane tribunal had inaccurate plans for the Stardust building and ignored the role of a large quantity of stored inflammables in the conflagration.

In November 2004, I accompanied a delegation of Stardust survivors and relatives to meet Mr. Sean Aylward, Secretary General of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform, and Mr. Noel Sinnott, principal officer, on the conclusions of Geraldine Foy's report. Unfortunately, the members of the Stardust victims' committee felt compelled to walk out of that meeting because they believed rightly that the Department was refusing to take this report seriously.

In February 2006, I based my rejection in this House of the Keane tribunal report on six key elements. First, the serious conflict of interest in the use of the fire research station of the United Kingdom Department of the Environment, which had also worked immediately prior to the disaster for Dublin Corporation; second, section 8.92 of the Keane tribunal report — the serious breaches of building by-laws and public resort laws, which were never properly dealt with or invigilated by the Keane tribunal; third, the deeply flawed original forensic examination by the gardaí and the Department of Justice; fourth, the faulty conclusions on the operation of the electrical system within the Stardust; fifth, the faulty conclusions on the origin of the fire on the night of the inferno; and, sixth, the failure to bring anybody to account for the deaths of 48 young people that night.

Fundamental questions remain about how the Stardust was run, how the relevant authorities and especially Dublin Corporation at the time invigilated the operation of the Stardust in terms of planning and fire safety and fire control laws, and the appalling stories we have subsequently heard about chained and locked emergency exits. Profound local suspicions remain that the authorities never intended to investigate fully what happened on the night of the fire, and there are allegations of even deeper conspiracies to prevent the truth coming out.

Following another initiative by the Stardust victims' committee, in November 2006 a detailed memorandum, Nothing But The Truth — The Case for a New Public Inquiry, was sent to the former Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, outlining the reason a new inquiry was essential. That submission by the committee's solicitor, Mr. Greg O'Neill, painstakingly reviewed all the evidence submitted to the Keane tribunal, and subsequent discoveries, and made a powerful conclusion that there was no basis in evidence for the finding of arson. Especially striking in Mr. O'Neill's fine report is the evidence given by fire experts Mr. Robin Knox, a former fire chief in Dublin, Mr. Tony Gillick, and the professor of fire dynamics in University of Ulster, Professor Delichatsios.

The victims' committee was treated appallingly during this period and given the run-around by the then Taoiseach, Deputy Ahern, and the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Michael McDowell. Like the relatives, I was dismayed by the Government lethargy at the time, especially as the Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, lived only about 100 m from the nightclub at the time of the inferno.

In July 2008, Mr. Paul Coffey was appointed to conduct the independent examination of the Stardust victims' committee's case for a reopened inquiry into the fire and produced the recommendations we have before us. On the day of the report's publication last week, I strongly welcomed conclusions 5.11, 5.12, 5.13 and 5.14 which clearly acknowledge that the original Keane tribunal conclusion that arson was the cause of the 1981 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 Stardust victims' committee.

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