The inquest into the 1981 fire in a Dublin nightclub, which claimed the lives of 48 people, reached its verdict after days of deliberation.
The jury at Dublin Coroner’s Court found the fire was started by an electrical fault in the hot press in the main bar, and not as a result of arson as had been ruled in the 1981 inquest. This original ruling had always been challenged by the victim’s families and was overturned in 2009.
The new inquest also found that polyurethane foam seating and carpet tiles on the walls had contributed to the fire’s rapid spread, with the resulting smoke and heat making escape from the building more difficult. A lack of staff preparedness, ignorance of the building’s layout, and failures of the emergency lighting also impeded people’s ability to escape. Many of the emergency exits had also been locked, chained shut, or were otherwise obstructed.
All 48 of the victims were aged between 16 and 27, and had joined upwards of 800 others at the St Valentine’s Day disco at the Stardust Ballroom in Artane, Dublin, when the fire broke out between 01:20 and 01:40 local time. A further 200 people were injured in the fatal blaze.
The families of the victims continued to call for a fresh investigation into the fire, with this new inquest finally granted in 2019 and beginning in April 2023. It proved to be the longest running and largest inquest in the history of the Republic of Ireland and heard from over 370 witnesses before coming to its conclusion on Thursday 18 April.
Responding to the final verdict, one survivor of the fire, Antoinette Keegan who lost her sisters Mary (19) and Martina (16), told the Irish Times that the families were “overwhelmed”, but that “someone should be held accountable”. She also called on the authorities to investigate whether any criminal charges should be brought, saying that, “We should never have had to do what we did for 43 years. The state should have done what we did.”
After the announcement of the inquest’s verdict, families of the victims marched to the Garden of Remembrance, with photographs of those who died and a black banner emblazoned with the words: ‘They never came home’.
On Tuesday 23 April, Ireland’s taoiseach, Simon Harris, gave a formal apology in the Dáil, as members of families of victims and survivors watched on from the public gallery.
“We should have been by your side. We should have worked with you. We were not. We did not. And for that, we are truly sorry,” he said.
“The Stardust tragedy was one of the darkest moments in our history, a heartbreaking tragedy because of the lives that were lost, the families that were changed forever, and the long, drawn-out struggle for justice that followed.”
His words were echoed by Irish President Michael D Higgins who said the judgement was "of the deepest importance for all those whose lives were so irreparably altered by that most appalling of days” and that the verdict was “a vindication of the fight of those relatives”.