Sean Murray: At long last, the families get the truth about the Stardust fire

Meeting your da and him telling you not to be out too late, you have training in the morning.

Heading home and asking your ma to iron your good shirt. Dancing on the landing while playing a few records. Chatting to your siblings while you have dinner.

Going out then and meeting your pals for a few drinks first. Laughing and joking, hearing about their weeks, discussing the sport and the music.

You’re young. You’re earning a bit of money. You’re having a good time. Life isn’t half bad.

Then you head into the disco. The lads make sure to borrow a tie if they need one. Girls offer to go in with the lads because the bouncers will refuse a bunch of lads together.

The place is buzzing. You see faces you know all around the place. Your usual spot is curtained-off tonight so you head to the other seating area and set up camp.

You go for a dance and then watch the others strut their stuff for the big dancing competition. There’d been a big build up to it for weeks.

When the winners are picked, you clap and cheer like everyone else.

And then, the first sign of something wrong. Someone points out a small fire in that curtained-off area, where you usually sat. It looks like it’s on a table and maybe some chairs.

You go to get your friends, get your coat, and get out. But it all changes so quickly. Something’s wrong. Badly wrong. People are panicking. You’ve not even got your coat yet when the lights go out. Flames are flashing all around you. The place is filling up with smoke.

A horror is unfolding in front of you. Behind you. All around you. You have to get out.

Instinct kicks in and you try to get out the way you came in. The main entrance. Others have had this idea. When you get there, something else is wrong. People aren’t getting out. There’s something wrong at the door. A crush is starting.

But the door bursts open. Fresh air gushes in and you manage to escape. You breathe in deep and survey what’s around you. There’s already pandemonium outside. You find one friend who tells you another pal is still inside.

You have to go back in. It’s what anyone would do, isn’t it? You know you should.

But there’s also plenty you don’t know.

You don’t know the venue was made with such desperately dangerous carpet tiles on the walls that conditions inside became untenable for human life within a minute and a half of seeing that small fire.

You don’t know that the place is full of such noxious fumes that you could be overcome and die within seconds.

You don’t know about the reckless and irresponsible chaining of emergency exit doors on that night and many other nights you came here for a good time.

You only know that there’s people still in there. And you want to help them. What should you do?

But you also don’t know that 48 young people will never come home again. Will never dance on the landing and share jokes with their siblings. Meet their friends for a pint or go shopping in town.

You don’t know that their families will wait over 43 years for closure. For answers. To be told how and why they died.

After all this time, there’s one last thing that we all finally know. That has finally been brought out into the light, after decades of lingering in the darkness. It is that these 48 young people were unlawfully killed in the disaster that struck the Valentine’s disco in the early hours of February 14, 1981.

Ultimate big sister

Marie Kennedy’s family didn’t want to talk about that place. The place where everything changed. They wanted to remember her as she was. Her love of Leo Sayer and Abba. Born just before Christmas, the family would wait until her birthday before putting up the decorations at home. They said they still do.

They talked about how she was passionate about the two most sacred forms of dancing for a youth in Dublin at the time — disco and Irish dancing. She had even taken part in the St Patrick’s Day parade, Irish dancing her way across O’Connell Bridge in the freezing cold and pouring rain.

They talked about their best pal, the oldest of six, the ultimate big sister.

Marie Kennedy was 17 when she lost her life in the Stardust disaster.

But the curse of the Stardust lingers. Like it did for all of these families. Even the good times carry with it an enduring sadness.

For Marie’s family, it is being haunted by what might have been, and by what should never have happened.

“Decades of unprocessed grief, shock, and anger,” her sister Michelle said last May. “The unanswered questions. And the memories — the good ones can often be as painful as the bad.

“I was going to write a whole section about the night Marie died. About how our parents found her in Jervis Street hospital and our mam recognised her by her feet. How our dad and grandad went to officially identify her the next day and came out forever changed. How her loss destroyed our family.”

The Kennedy family, however, didn’t want to talk about that place.

Michelle said: “In the end I decided not to. Marie has been lost in the smoke and devastation of the Stardust for too long. The decades-long fight for answers has taken far too much from us already. So today we’re taking her back and remembering her life. We are reclaiming her from the darkness and despair and bringing her back into the sunlight where she belongs.”

After 43 years, the families and friends of each of the 48 young people who lost their lives so tragically on that cold night at the north Dublin disco had gotten the chance to do exactly that.

Bring them back into focus. Honour their memory by having the truth laid bare about what happened.

Ms Kennedy’s family spoke at what was the start of the process in these fresh inquests which began almost a year ago in the specially-convened coroner’s court in the Pillar Room of Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital.

‘Unlawful killing’

That start, where families gave their loved ones a voice through pen portraits, was an essential precursor to what would follow, culminating in the verdict of the Stardust inquests.

The 13-person jury at the inquests took their seats after poring over the details of over 100 days of evidence for 40 hours. The time had finally come.

You could hear a pin drop in the packed public gallery as the brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, and friends from long ago, held their breath.

Those two words, so long awaited, would change everything. “Unlawful killing”. In unison the families stood up to applaud, to cry out. The Pillar Room shook under the weight.

Anyone in the court room to witness the scenes will remember it for the rest of their lives. Just like hearing the news of the Stardust itself. They’ll remember the waterfall of emotions — of grief, relief, joy, sadness, disbelief — cascading through the room. These families who had been through so much. Who had faced every obstacle.

Given the truth at last. A truth that should never be forgotten as a stain on Ireland for being so long in coming.

Carpet tiles

Eamon Butterly thought they had built “one of the safest places around” when Scott’s Food Factory in Artane, north Dublin, was converted into an entertainment venue in the mid-1970s.

His father Patrick had acquired the pub licence of the Silver Swan on Burgh Quay in Dublin city and relocated it to the site owned by the family around 6km -7km north of the city centre. Alongside the Silver Swan was a function room and restaurant they called The Lantern Rooms. And then there was the Stardust. A huge ballroom for gigs and dances that was licensed to hold almost 1,500 people. Coming out of the heyday of the showband area, it featured performers such as Dickie Rock, Joe Dolan, and Sonny Knowles. But it also held gigs for an altogether different crowd, infamously hosting The Specials and The Beat for an ill-tempered affair in January 1981.

It held its first disco in February 1980, two years after it had first opened. It held its last a year later, on Friday, February 13, 1981.

As per its licence, it had a capacity of 1,458 people. It had three bars inside the main ballroom, two sets of toilets, tiered seating areas, a dancefloor, and stage space.

There were issues at the start. Important aspects that would prove so significant later for those who went to this nightclub that night.

The carpet tiles put on the walls didn’t have the required fire cert needed to be put on the walls. An earlier inquiry would hear that technical experts for the manufacturer were horrified when they heard they’d been put there.

As Bernard Condon SC, for the families, would sum up at the inquests:

Carpet Tiles. On a wall. You don’t really need to go much further. On a wall. On all the walls.

Fire experts would later say that the carpet tiles contributed substantially to the spread of the fire. The fire first seen on the seats in the area known as the west alcove wouldn’t have spread so quickly, so rapidly, or so fatally had it not been for those tiles.

Witness after witness described the sudden change when the fire reached the wall, then ran up it and then across the ceiling to rapidly engulf the rest of the Stardust. The experts said that the rapid spread caused by the carpet tiles quickly made conditions in the Stardust untenable for human life.

Eamon Butterly told the inquests that if Dublin Corporation hadn’t been happy with the choice of those tiles, they could have told them and he’d have taken them down. In any case, putting them up there wasn’t in accordance with the planning permission for the Stardust.

Locked doors

In fact, there were multiple breaches of bylaws both in the construction and operation of the Stardust, experts found. Witness testimony from patrons and a Dublin Corporation inspector prior to 1981 pointed to doors locked, chained and obstructed on various occasions. Furthermore, no staff member was ever shown what to do in the event of a fire, given an evacuation plan, experienced a fire drill or shown how to use a fire extinguisher.

There was a concert by English ska band The Specials in January 1981. By all accounts, it was a “shit-show”. The venue was overcapacity. There was crowd trouble. And when Martin Donohoe, a Dublin Corporation inspector, attended the scene he wasn’t impressed. He found a passageway to one of the emergency exits obstructed. This wasn’t the first time this had happened.

Dublin Corporation wrote to Patrick Butterly that unless it received “immediate assurances” that exits would remain unobstructed and made sure all the exits were immediately available it would be necessary to “institute proceedings” for contravention of the bylaw and raise it at their next licensing hearing.

Eamon Butterly replied, saying he personally took great care to make sure all exits were clear and that “all exits will be kept clear when the public are on the premises”.

Brenda Campbell KC, for the families, told the inquests: “What value would Mr Butterly’s assurances be? The answer comes in his reply. He gave them his assurances. But those assurances were penned at a time we know the policy of chaining in the doors in the Stardust was not loosening. It was tightening.”

Just a few weeks before the fire, large metal plates were erected at the windows by the toilets by the entrance of the Stardust. The suggestion had been that weapons or drink were being passed in through the windows. Witnesses described simply passing ties through to lads outside so they could get in past the bouncers.

Either way, counsel for the families described this as an “overreaction” even if drink was being passed in. It meant these windows could not be used as a means of escape.

The inquests heard evidence that doorman John Furley remarked to a colleague that the place was “like Alcatraz”, referring to the infamous prison off the coast of San Francisco.

This multitude of factors, which the young people heading here for a drink and a dance on February 13, 1981 would have had no idea of, would prove catastrophic. Experts said putting all these together, when disaster struck, “the time required for escape was longer than the time available for escape”. When asked what he’d have done differently, Eamon Butterly said: “I’d have never gotten involved in converting that factory to a nightclub. I’d have knocked it down and built a new one.”

Night of the fire

It was freezing cold on February 13, 1981. The young people who’d finished work were all ready for a big night out. Many of them were employed in the local area, such as the 15 or so Superquinn workers that included Liam Dunne, David Morton, and Mary and Martina Keegan.

It cost £3 to get into the Stardust. It was supposed to be an over-21s disco, but this was irrelevant. This wasn’t a time when you carried a passport or ID with you on a night out to prove your age.

It’s estimated that four in five people in the Stardust were under the age of 21. Dozens were underage, some as young as 14 or 15.

Many of them were regulars. Going out to the Stardust at least one night a week, or again on the Saturday and Sunday if you had the money. DJs were in demand as the pirate radio scene was still blooming, acts that catered to the younger generation were also sought after. Even though economic times were bleak at the beginning of the 1980s, the market was still well and truly there for a night out like the discos in the Stardust.

It was a typical night in the Stardust, albeit one with a bit more hype around it than usual. The disco dancing competition was on. The prize on offer was a not insignificant £25 K-Tel record voucher. Disco dancing was the big thing. Just a year before on The Late Late Show, an incredulous Gay Byrne presented Ireland’s disco dancing champion who’d scooped a cool £1,000 in the all-Ireland competition.

As the night was reaching a crescendo, and the dancers went to strut their stuff, disaster was just minutes away.

The fire could well have started in the hot press, located in the main bar. There were a number of electrical issues at the Stardust and with the hot press in particular, which produced excess heat. Wiring wasn’t properly connected and there was corrosion at the connections.

Furthermore, the round plastic cover meant to be on the upper unit of the hot press had been removed, and could’ve led to the thermostat not switching off.

Heat could’ve been generated then which could have ignited the insulation jacket around the hot press.

Backing onto the west alcove where the fire was then first spotted, this could’ve spread from the hot press there and started the train of events that followed.

Fire expert Dr Will Hutchinson said this was a “likely cause of the fire”.

Linda Bishop first felt it as heat behind her. She was sitting with her back to the blind that separated the west alcove from the rest of the Stardust. This was at around 1.30am.

She remembered thinking how strange it would have been to turn on the heat in the place just as the night was going to wind down.

Some of the patrons in that area began to get a burning smell. It was coming from under the blind in the west alcove.

Elizabeth Marley, a waitress at the Stardust, recalled looking through the blind and seeing what appeared to be two seats on fire. “I’ve spent 40 years trying to forget it,” she told the inquests.

Those descriptions of first seeing the fire always stress the same thing. It was a small fire. One that people felt might have been easily brought under control. It was on seats toward the back of the west alcove. Some people stopped to look. Others went to get their coats. Others kept dancing. The music continued to play.

So many things began to happen at once, such as barman Larry Neville running into the back to alert the management and patrons running to the front entrance to alert the doormen. Taking their own initiative, some staff grabbed fire extinguishers and tried to put out the fire, but the extinguishers had no effect.

Things changed so quickly and so rapidly when the fire hit the back wall where the carpet tiles were.

It coincided with the blind to the west alcove being lifted up and the fire being drawn to the attention of more and more patrons.

From this small fire, within minutes temperatures in the club would’ve reached 1,200C. By the time everyone there realised they had to get out, it would already be too late for some.

Pathologists told the inquests that many died from rapid incapacitation due to the inhalation of fire fumes. The last place many of them were seen was on the dancefloor.

People trying to get out were hampered by the horrific states of some of the exits. Exit 3 was chained and locked. This was at the end of the passageway at the back of the stage. Witnesses described seeing multiple men having to kick the door in to get out.

Antoinette Keegan was at the Stardust on the night of the fire with her sisters Mary and Martina, and their friend Mary Kenny. She was the only one to make it out alive.

There were difficulties getting out of exit 4 and 5 too, near the dancefloor. Witnesses described obstructions near exit 4 and men having to kick exit 5 to get it open. Antoinette held hands with Mary,  Martina, and Mary Kenny, near exit 4 after the lights went out and they fell to the floor. She remembered saying “oh God help us”.

The inquests would hear of a “cluster” of bodies later found near this dancefloor, and witnesses describing problems getting out of those exits nearby.

Exit 2 was the main entrance, the exit that most people flocked to when attempting to flee. It had two doors either side of the main door that had the shutters pulled down on them. Absolutely useless for anyone trying to get out. While some people made it out quickly, the door swung back and stayed closed for a time with no one able to open it.

Patrons described a crush developing at this door in the struggle. Some people were pushed up the stairs to the left, trying to find some relief. Two more bodies would later be found here.

The first fire brigade arrived within 10 minutes of the first emergency call. Doorman John Fitzsimons was also a fireman and able to explain the gravity of the situation when he called it in.

He told them it would be a “brigade call”, the most serious of calls requiring a huge response. None of the fireman going to the Stardust had ever attended a brigade call before.

The inquest heard that the first fireman on the scene said: “God, almighty, I’ve never seen anything like it”. By the time they got there, there was nothing they could do for those who’d already died. But there were people still alive in there. Trapped in toilets that had big metal plates on them preventing them from getting out. These fireman bravely entered the Stardust to rescue them.

One poignant moment in court saw retired fireman Noel Hosback describe using his breathing apparatus to give a bit of air to those he’d found in the toilets before getting them out of the blazing club. One of them, Deirdre Dames, was sitting in the public gallery.

The rescue mission, however, soon turned to a recovery one. Fireman and gardaí lifted out the bodies one by one, doing a grand sweep of the venue. It was grim, grisly work. None of them could ever forget that night pulling out body after body, and then transferring them to the morgue.

And then it was time to identify and bury the dead.

So many of the families would later say how horrific this process was. Waiting for news. Being told your loved one had been reduced to just a number. One of what would eventually be 48. Identified by a ring, a necklace, a jacket. Never allowed to see them again. Told which funeral home they were brought to and when they’d be buried.

And the funerals. One after another. While some of the deceased were from as far afield as Belfast and Derry, a majority from that small pocket of working class, north Dublin. Groups of friends where one was now gone. Or two. Or three. People they’d gone to school with. Worked with.

Several of the bodies could not be identified. Only DNA testing decades later would allow families to rebury their children.

Murtagh Kavanagh’s sister Terry Jones told the inquests: “There was no private family funeral or burial for Murty. We did not know which coffin was his when we attended the Mass and burials for the five unidentified, in Donnycarney Church on February 23, 1981.

“We were all left devastated by the traumatic loss of Murty, the absence of a private funeral, and him being unidentified. But it was my father that was truly broken.

“Every day he would say ‘I would love to know where my son is buried’. He would say this every day until his own passing, in 1985.”

Not arson

Why did it take so long to get to this point now? It’s not an easy question to answer.

For one, the Irish State doesn’t like having to re-examine something. When it goes to great expense to try get to the bottom of something, it wants that to be the final say on it. A tribunal of inquiry is probably the highest form of inquiry that can be held in the country.

One was commissioned immediately after the Stardust tragedy by then-Taoiseach Charles Haughey.

While castigating the Butterlys for the failings at the club, it was one singular finding that had a significant impact.

Having already said that the cause of the fire is not known and may never be known, Mr Justice Ronan Keane went on to say “the Tribunal has come to the conclusion that the more probable explanation of the fire is that it was caused deliberately”. This conclusion of “probable arson” would dog this story for decades.

It was shattering for the families of victims. They felt they were being told that one of their own, a person there on the night had started this fire that killed so many.

Despite the chains on the doors and the breaches of the bylaws. It was an arsonist behind it. But, no arsonist was ever found. No one would have to account for what happened here.

Of course, the arson verdict would prove helpful for the Butterlys. They claimed for compensation for malicious damage and received over £500,000.

Stardust families were just expected to move on. Get over it. A compensation tribunal set up by the Government in the mid-80s was an alternative to the multiple claims being made in the courts. If you signed up to the compensation tribunal, it was on the condition you’d give up your court bid.

It was throwing money at a problem to make it go away.

State papers from 1985 later showed that the Department of the Taoiseach wanted to distance itself from compensation claims for victims over fears it would be a chaotic and controversial process.

‘Mere grief’

John Keegan, father of Stardust victims Mary and Martina, wasn’t granted compensation because it was ruled that “one could not award compensation for mere grief, however intense”. Mere grief.

Those words are symptomatic of how the families felt they were treated for so long.

As the years went by, there was this sense of never getting the answers they had wanted. These young people had danced here and died here, and there was no explanation beyond a “probable” cause that the fire was started deliberately.

A victims’ committee led the charge. People went in and out of it over the years. Interest ebbed and flowed. Hopes rose and were dashed, frequently. The key thing they wanted was for a new examination into the fire. New, fresh inquiries as to what happened. People independent of the tragedy came on board, trying to help. Newer research claimed the fire had started in the kroof space.

The first win came in 2009. The “probable arson” was struck off the record in the Dáil. Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern acknowledged that the cause of the fire was unknown and “none of the persons present on the night of the fire can be held responsible for it”.

But that didn’t translate to a new inquiry. Governments of the day would occasionally bend to the pressure being applied, but it often felt like more of a placating measure. “We’ll take a look, but we can’t promise anything... our hands are tied.”

People would be appointed to have a look and if they didn’t recommend what the families wanted, what was the Government to do? This evidence you have is interesting, but can we really find any answers this long after the fact? That kind of thing.

The Coffey Report in 2009 didn’t recommend a new inquiry. Neither did the assessment from retired judge Pat McCartan in 2017, in both cases independent figures asked to take a look at the evidence that had been gathered. The Government offered an “our hands are bound by this” argument, but the families would still not be deterred.

Sea change

Darragh Mackin was a sea change. From Belfast-based Phoenix Law, he researched the case and helped the families switch tack. Having identified there had been little to no investigation into the fire at the original inquests for the deceased, he began petitioning the Government on that basis.

It was the same route taken by the Hillsborough families to great effect. An inquest is an investigation into the circumstances of someone’s death. It’s not a tribunal of inquiry. But it is nevertheless designed as a forum where facts will out.

Being granted these inquests back in 2019 set in train the events which culminated in the incredible scenes in and outside of court yesterday.

Having been denied for so long, told there was nothing that could be done, and told essentially to give it up, this was a new venue for the Stardust families. One in which they were represented by some of the best barristers around in Sean Guerin, Michael O’Higgins, Brenda Campbell, Des Fahy and Bernard Condon. In them, the families had decades of experience going to bat for them in a forum which would go into every minutiae of the case.

Credit too must go the coroner, Dr Myra Cullinane, for the professional and sensitive way she conducted the hearings and her legal team, with the likes of Mark Tottenham BL and Gemma McLoughlin-Burke BL, for their thorough grasp of the case and their own dogged and expert questioning of witnesses over the last year.

And the families also had a jury giving up almost a year of their lives to listen intently to what happened to their loved ones all those years ago. Who would have to reach a verdict on how they died at the end.

The courage of the witnesses to get up and describe what they saw on that horrific night must be acknowledged. Unquestionably, the dignity with which family members of each of the deceased stood up to deliver those devastating pen portraits at the start of proceedings has to be commended.

But there are those deserving of special praise for never giving up the fight and pushing to the end.

As Michael O’Higgins SC summed up in his closing statement: “I’d like to reflect on not just why we’re here but why we are here 43 years later. How is that? The answer, ladies and gentlemen, is quite simple. Women. Mothers, daughters, siblings. Women possessed of indomitable spirit.” Gerty Barrett, Christine Keegan, Bridget McDemott, Phylis McHugh and many more.

It’s as incredible that they made it this far as it is that it took this long to get here.

‘It’ll never be over’

Tragedy dogs each individual story from the Stardust fire. For those there on the night. For those who never came home. And their families. Each tiny note echoes with the decades of grief. Of pain. Of trauma. And of what might have been.

Francis and Maureen Lawlor were married and parents to 18-month-old Lisa, who would become an orphan because of the Stardust fire. “I listened night after night to my grandmother’s wails, who wished she died and not my father,” Lisa told the inquests. “I was frozen in terror listening to this for years.”

Eugene Hogan, who was due to move to Kerry with his wife Marie the very next day, died in the fire. “[He] told me to wait and that he was going up to get the coats, he told me to wait and that he wouldn’t be long,” Marie told the inquests. She never saw her husband alive again.

Liam Dunne, the last to die, succumbed to his injuries in hospital. His sister Siobhan had visited him, and he told her how he was “crawling on the floor and my hands were melting”.

The McHughs — Maurice and Phyllis — went to a wedding in England on the weekend of the fire. Their only child, Caroline, was 17 years old and wanted to stay to go to the Stardust. She never came home. Maurice recalled the long drive to the airport to get a flight home, knowing what they were coming back to. “Not one word was said,” he recalled.

The Keegan sisters, who held hands as they lay on the ground just metres from an exit unable to move. Antoinette was pulled out. Mary and Martina were not. Her family are forever haunted by those events.

Their late mother Christine, a campaigner to the end, told RTÉ back in 1987 after the passing of her husband: “I mean, just put it this way: My girls went out to enjoy themselves and never came back. My husband was never sick in his life.

“It’ll never be over. That memory will be in my house for as long as I’m there. I’d like to open the door and let my two children walk in. And have my husband beside me. But that’ll never happen. The Stardust took the three of them.”

The McDermotts lost three. Willie, George, and Marcella. Their parents didn’t know Marcella had gone out. She told them she’d been babysitting. Their sister Selena recalled their mother screaming at their coffins in the church. “Why, why did he have to take three of them?”

The Stardust story is not one person’s or one family’s. The ripple effect of these 48 deaths has affected hundreds of people. Thousands. So many people have suffered and so many have fought for what happened yesterday.

And now we know.

These young people — all 48 of them — were unlawfully killed. They were claimed by the smoke and the flames of the Stardust. We know what happened to them. We know it should never have happened to them.

So, so many years on now — at long last — the families finally have what they’ve always wanted. The truth.