‘Bittersweet’ day for Stardust families as Taoiseach Simon Harris makes State apology in Dáil

Mr Harris said the State had failed them when they needed help the most during his statement this afternoon.

Some family members were moved to tears as they sat in the public gallery to hear Mr Harris’s apology more than 43 years after the devastating nightclub blaze.

Mr Harris said: "I know there have been many times when you thought this day would never come.

"I know you were forced to endure a living nightmare which began when your loved ones were 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.”

Speaking after the apology, Damien Keegan, brother of Mary and Martina Keegan, said it was a "bittersweet" day for the family.

He said that members of their family "broke down" when their mother Christine Keegan, a leading campaigner for the Stardust families who died in 2020, was mentioned during Dail statements.

He said his fifth birthday was in the April after the Stardust tragedy in February 1981.

"All I knew growing up throughout my whole life was looking at my mother fighting for justice," he said.

"The State turned its back on all of us."

He added: "The State has done absolutely nothing so far apart from the apology for us.

"Follow it up and show us what you mean, you're sorry. Show us your commitment, what you're saying in there you're going to do for us. Show us."

He said that Simon Harris delivered a "good apology" and that he seems "genuine".

Patricia Dunne, whose brother Brian Hobbs died in the Stardust fire, described the apology as "good, but not great".

She said: "I am not majorly excited, I'm not majorly upset, it was good but not great.

"Hard enough going at times. The Taoiseach (Simon Harris) was fine. Mary Lou (McDonald) was extremely brilliant. She got a round of applause from all the families.

"I told the Taoiseach on Saturday that he needed to read all the pen portraits himself, not his scripts to understand where we were coming from and to feel my hurt, which I think he did.

"It was the biggest disaster in the history of the state, 48 dying at the one time. Think of the magnitude, that's a lot of people. And 43 years later, here we are explaining ourselves again and hoping they understand.

"We will see how the next few days pan out and have they taken it fully on board or are some of them going through the motions again.

"There are things promised and people will keep in contact with us. We will see how it goes. We have had promises for years."

Forty-eight people were killed when the blaze ripped through the nightclub in 1981. An unborn baby also died in the tragedy.

After a more than 40-year campaign for justice, last week an inquest found that the 48 victims had been unlawfully killed.

This afternoon, politicians and others gathered in the Dáil applauded and got to their feet to welcome the Stardust families who gathered in the public gallery.

Mr Harris said: "Today we say formally and without any equivocation, we are sorry.

"We failed you when you needed us the most, from the very beginning we should have stood with you but instead we forced you to stand against us."

Family members gathered in the distinguished visitors' gallery and public gallery in the Dail chamber to listen to the Taoiseach.

Mr Harris said he hopes the apology and statements help the Stardust families heal.

"I truly hope that the days since last Thursday have marked a turning point and here today in Dail Eireann we finally begin to put things right," he said.

"To bring you in from the cold and end the neglect of 43 years waiting and fighting for the only thing you ever wanted, the truth. Nothing else. No other agenda, just the truth."

Lisa Lawlor, who was 17 months old when her parents Francis and Maureen Lawlor died in the Stardust fire, said that she is "very, very happy" with the Mr Harris's apology.

Speaking outside Leinster House, Ms Lawlor said: "We are very happy with what happened today.

"The news is brilliant, we had a great victory here today that people of the Stardust and the victims are not being blamed for their deaths anymore.

"I am very happy.

"I lost my identity through Stardust. Both my parents were killed that night. None of them made it that night.

"We have made Irish history today."

Green Party leader Eamon Ryan described an "incredibly important day" for the families.

However he said he is conscious that any sense of relief brought by the official apology to the families is "tempered by the fact that they (the families) had to wait for far, far too long to hear it".

"The organs of the Irish state didn't respond when repeatedly confronted by contradictory evidence," Mr Ryan said.

"It's a sobering indictment of our integrity as a nation and one that we must reflect upon, uncomfortable though it may be for many of us in the most powerful positions."

He said last week's inquest findings confirmed what the families "had known for decades", that their loved ones had been unlawfully killed.

A previous finding in 1982 said the fire had been started deliberately, a theory the families never accepted.

That ruling was dismissed in 2009, leading to the latest inquests for the victims, who were aged from 16 to 27 and mostly came from the surrounding north Dublin area.

Last Thursday, the jury in the inquest returned a verdict that all 48 victims were unlawfully killed.

A majority decision from the seven women and five men found that the blaze, which broke out in the early hours of Valentine's Day 1981, was caused by an electrical fault in the hot press of the bar.

Minister for Housing Darragh O'Brien said it is right and fitting for the Irish parliament to apologise, "however late in the day".

"In responding to the Stardust tragedy our state did not live up to the principles of justice, its core values, nor on the decency that we owe every person," the Dublin Fingal TD said.

"The victims, their families, their friends, and their community were let down.

"This failure is a matter of deep and lasting regret and shame for our state and all of us who represent it. The state's response was utterly lacking in compassion and understanding.

"Even worse, it compounded the trauma with grievous mistakes, the baseless findings of probable arson that cast scurrilous aspersions of guilt on an entire community.

"The paucity and the complexity of the state compensation, the sheer amount of time it has taken us to get to today's apology. We owed all of you so much more."

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald said that the "big lie" that the fire had been caused by arson began to spread soon after the fire.

"It was a lie repeated over and over," Ms McDonald said.

"It smeared, it criminalised the victims and survivors suggesting that one of their number was responsible.

"It was a lie that devastated families and further traumatised survivors. To this day those families and survivors still ask who crafted that lie? Who spun it, who spread it and why? What was their motive? And who were they protecting?

"Forty-three years on and they still don't have the answer to those questions.

"In November 1981, the original tribunal presided over by Justice Ronan Keane concluded that the fire was probably caused by arson. The big lie then became the state's official position."