Denise Mitchell (Dublin Bay North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the survivors and families of victims of the Stardust fire to the Public Gallery. Everyone here remembers the night of the Stardust fire and the weeks and months that followed. Something that always stands out for me is my memory of the queues of people outside our local phone box in Darndale trying to get through to friends and family to make sure they were safe. A very dark cloud hung over our community that night and even as a child I was very aware of it. It is a cloud that continues to hang over communities because the families and friends of those who never came home on that Valentine's night have never received closure. The families and survivors have never heard the truth of what happened and they feel let down time and time again by Governments on the issue.

These families and the survivors have been living a nightmare for 36 years.

I am sure many Members watched the RTÉ documentary, "After the Headlines", by Charlie Bird last Tuesday night. I commend that documentary and I encourage people who seem to think that these families should put this tragedy in the past and forget about it to watch it. It shows the reality of what this fire did and how it shaped the lives of those left behind. The fire did not just change the lives of the people involved, it also tore families apart. It had ripple effects across communities.

Families feel they were let down by the justice system. One of the survivors told me that in the years after the tragedy her father used to say, "A lot of these kids were from Bonnybrook - I can't help but feel that if they were from Donnybrook we would have gotten to the truth much sooner".

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