LAST UPDATE | 23 Apr

TAOISEACH SIMON HARRIS has delivered a State apology to the Stardust families in an emotional speech in the Dáil as members of victims’ families watched on from the gallery. 

There was a standing ovation for the families as Leas Cheann Comhairle TD Catherine Connolly welcomed them to Leinster House. 

Taoiseach Simon Harris apologised to the families who he said were forced to endure a “living nightmare”. 

The Taoiseach told the families that instead of the State coming to their aid in the aftermath of the fire they instead received a cold shoulder.

He said the institutions of the State let the families down and said they should “never have had to walk alone”.   

“We should have offered counselling, we should have provided answers, and we should have ensured the truth came out,” the Taoiseach said. 

“In such shattering circumstances, the expectation must surely be that the State comes to the aid of its citizens and supports them in the terrible aftermath.

Instead, it is to our great and eternal shame that far from the warm embrace of a caring State, the Stardust families experienced a cold shoulder, and a deaf ear, and two generations of struggle for truth and justice.

“Instead, it is to our great shame that State processes heaped misery upon tragedy for the Stardust families,” the Taoiseach said.

He went on to say that the pain and grief of the families was “compounded by stigma and rejection”.

He said the families were forced to fight for decades to “obtain the vindication you won last Thursday when the inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing in the case of your 48 family members.”

“For all of this, as Taoiseach, on behalf of the State, I apologise unreservedly to all the families of the Stardust victims and all the survivors for the hurt that was done to them and for the profoundly painful years of struggle for the truth.

“I apologise to the families that those present on the night of the fire were wrongly criminalised through the allegation of arson which was an attack on their reputations,” he said.

“I know there have been many, many times when you thought this day would never come over far too many, many years.

“I know that you were forced to endure a living nightmare, which began when your loved ones were so cruelly snatched from you in a devastating fire. Their unfinished stories became your story.

“The defining story of your lives and the lives of your parents and other family members who left this life before ever seeing justice.

I am deeply sorry that you were made to fight for so long that they went to their graves never knowing the truth. 

“Today we say formally and without any equivocation – We are sorry. We failed you when you needed us the most,” the Taoiseach said.

Today’s State apology comes after the jury in the Stardust inquests last week returned a verdict of unlawful killing in the case of all 48 victims.

It is the culmination of decades of campaigning by the families and loved ones of those who perished in the nightclub fire in Artane on 14 February 1981. 

The Taoiseach today told the families that the State rubbed “salt in their terrible wounds” when they needed the State the most. 

Families of the victims watch on from the distinguished visitors' gallery.

The Taoiseach said the victims’ families asked him to try and really understand their experiences and to really feel their pain. 

He referred to the pen portraits of each of the victims that formed part of the recent inquests.

He said he found in these pen portraits “not only terrible anguish and unimaginable heartbreak, but also love, joy, laughter, personalities, promise, potential, slagging, messing, pride, dignity, talent, innocence and the deep abyss of loss and loneliness.”

The Taoiseach told the Dáil:

On February the 13th 1981, 48 daughters and sons, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, cousins and in-laws, uncles and aunts, neighbors, friends and co-workers went out to the Stardust on the night of the dancing competition and never came home.

“In the nightmare that was to follow their loved ones not only lost their lives, they lost their identities.”

He said these people were much more than numbers.

“They were bright, beautiful people. They had plans and dreams, their whole lives ahead of them,” the Taoiseach said.

He proceeded to name and remember each of the 48 victims. 

The Taoiseach also paid tribute to the hundreds of people who were injured and “scarred forever, physically and mentally”.

“Scarred by fire; scarred by survival,” he said.

“We think of the people working in the Stardust, the waiters and waitresses, the doormen and DJs.

“We think of the frontline workers who fought to save lives on the night. The fire crews, the ambulance and hospital staff, the Gardaí, the army, the taxi drivers.”

The Taoiseach also paid special tribute to Gertrude Barrett, Antoinette Keegan and Bridget McDermott.

“I want to pay tribute to three of the women who sat in that cold hut outside Government Buildings 15 years ago, who are here with us today – Gertrude Barrett, Antoinette Keegan and Bridget McDermott.

Their indomitable spirit in refusing to be kept out in the cold, led us to this moment today,” he said.