Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for attending. Over the past two decades in the Dáil, I have raised the Stardust tragedy and its aftermath probably on hundreds of occasions, given the ongoing and heroic struggle for justice of the Stardust Victims and Relatives Committee, outstandingly led over the years by Ms Christine Keegan, Ms Antoinette Keegan, Ms Gertrude Barrett, Ms Brid McDermott and Mr. Jimmy Dunne, with the strong support of many others, including Ms Geraldine Foy and Mr. Robin Knox.

I greatly welcomed the valuable re-examination undertaken by Mr. Paul Coffey SC in 2009 and its further clarification of the utterly flawed conclusions of the earlier Keane tribunal report of 1982. However, a number of disturbing issues have recently been raised with me about the publication of the Coffey report and the apparent significant differences between the report as carried out and submitted to the Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government by the independent legal expert, Mr. Coffey, and the document published a month later by the Government.

I have before me excerpts from a copy of a document obtained through an FOI request by the researcher Ms. Geraldine Foy, namely, the Stardust report that was issued to the previous Government by Mr. Paul Coffey SC on 10 December 2008. Paragraph 5.12 states:

The real difficulty appears to lie in the fact that despite having made a finding based on evidence that the cause of the fire is unknown, the Tribunal has placed on the public record a “finding of fact” of criminal wrongdoing which is prima facie speculative and fraught with evidential and logical difficulties. Moreover, the finding is so phrased as to give the impression to a reasonable man or woman in the street that it is a finding established by evidence and not a mere hypothetical explanation for the fire.

Paragraph 5.13 then states:

I accept that this is profoundly unsatisfactory to the survivors and the bereaved. I also accept the Committee’s submission that such was the scale of the disaster that it has become a matter of communal if not national history to an extent that engages a public interest in ensuring that the public record of what happened is factually accurate and established by evidence. I further accept that a new inquiry is necessary if it is the only way of placing on the public record a finding that is based on evidence.

However, paragraph 5.13 of the Coffey report that was eventually published on 7 January 2009 states:

This is profoundly unsatisfactory to the survivors and the bereaved who through their Committee argue that such was the scale of the disaster that it has become a matter of communal if not national history ... It seems to me that the terms of resolutions under which the Tribunal was established by the Oireachtas require nothing less [than looking at new evidence].

The later and published version of the Coffey report omits the key statement that Mr. Coffey “further accept[s] that a new inquiry is necessary if it is the only way of placing on the public record a finding that is based on evidence.”

Will the Minister explain this material difference between the December 2008 Coffey report and the January 2009 Coffey report, which was brought before this House and which I welcomed on behalf of the 48 victims and their families? Why was the key sentence omitted from the final version of a report by an independent eminent legal person when published by the Government? It is further argued by members of the Stardust relatives and victims committee that there were 70 significant report alterations between the 10 December 2008 report issued to the Government by Mr. Paul Coffey SC and the final report of 7 January 2009. Is this the case? If it is, it is an extraordinary situation.

Is the Minister aware that a 2008 Garda letter, referred to in tab 31, appendix 9 of the Paul Coffey report, was neither published nor seen at any time by the families, their researchers or their representatives before 2010? This was a Garda letter referring to a basement at the Stardust nightclub, which did not exist. Above all, is the Minister aware that the committee and its supporters have consistently sought proof for this non-existent Stardust basement referred to in the Keane report but without success? Is it not clear that the non-existence of this basement was confirmed by An Garda Síochána in its 2004 review of the Foy report?

In 2009, after 28 years of campaigning by the victims and relatives committee, the report by Mr. Paul Coffey vindicated their long struggle to achieve some level of justice for their loved ones. They rightly believed the original flawed Keane report added horrific insult to injury. There is still a sense that there is not closure in this matter for many of the relatives of the victims of the Stardust fire and these material alterations, which they have discovered through a freedom of information request, make a strong case for a new Michael McDowell-type commission of investigation to finally establish what happened and to vindicate the names and families of the 48 tragic young victims.

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