The families of 48 young people who died in the worst tragedy in the history of the State have spent 42 years fighting for the truth to come out.
Tomorrow, over three years since a fresh Stardust inquest was ordered, they will finally see a jury selected ahead of the hearing start date on April 25.
Selina McDermott was just 11 when her brothers George, 22, Willie, 18, and 16-year-old sister Marcella perished in the fire. George and Willie got ready and left home for the Artane nightclub where a disco dancing competition was being held on Valentine’s eve, February 13, 1981.
Read more: Stardust survivor Antoinette Keegan gives update on sister's lost picture
Marcella told her parents she was babysitting so she could sneak off to the dance venue with her friends from Finglas and Edenmore in Raheny, North Dublin.
Selina, now 53, will travel to Croke Park on Monday with her sister Louise, 54, and her 86-year-old mother Bridget to see a jury sworn in for the inquest.
They will carry photos of their dead loved ones and “pen portraits” of each victim will be read into the record. She told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “We have been waiting so long, it’s finally here after 42 years.
“The struggle for justice and the fight has taken so long. We’ve had obstacles every step of the way.
“It’s been very, very difficult for the families, and for the survivors. Now we almost can’t believe it’s here.”
Two Oireachtas appointed reviews and countless political promises have failed to deliver justice for the families of the 48 young people who died.
Fresh inquests were first ordered by former attorney general Seamus Woulfe in September 2019 – and are now scheduled to begin on Tuesday, April 25.
During the hearing, which is expected to take up to six months, the families will deliver pen portraits of their loved ones. Selina’s older sister June will speak about Willie, Louise will speak about George, and Selina will speak about Marcella.
All three are scheduled to address the court on the same day and Selina’s mother will then say a few words about the loss of her three children.
Selina said: “We will get up in the witness stand and talk about that person, the way they were, our memories of them.
“It will give the jury an insight into each one of those 48 lives – that they were human beings, they all had families, they had lives, they thought they would go home that night.
“It took us weeks and weeks to do the three family portraits. It was just very hard to do because you were bringing them back to life.
“That night, going out, how they were beforehand, how they were with my mother and father.” She added: “Marcella wasn’t meant to be there that night, she was supposed to be babysitting.
“I knew where she was going, [afterwards] I felt guilty that I hid her clothes in the alley, a little laneway beside the house.
“I was 11 at the time. I was always with Marcella, we went everywhere together. I went to the Dandelion Market with her, we would jump on the bus into town.” There were 841 young people in the venue – a factory turned nightclub – when a fire engulfed the 1,400 capacity premises shortly after 1.30am on February 14.
The blaze killed 44 and four other victims died in hospital from burns and smoke inhalation over the next agonising 25 days. Another 214 were left with injuries – 11 of them permanently disabled or disfigured from burns.
Selina recalled: “I was in my sister June’s house that night, she lives two doors down from the family home in Edenmore. My mother and father just burst through the door and said there’s a fire in the Stardust, everybody has to get up and search.
“They said, ‘We know George and Willie are there, Marcella is babysitting’. I said, ‘No she’s not’. My father said, ‘What the f*** do you mean’. He shook me. Then all hell broke loose.”
According to witnesses, Willie escaped the blaze three times – but went back into the inferno each time to try and save his siblings.
Selina said: “He was the first one to be found, they were going from hospital to hospital, to the morgue, this was going on and on. When Willie was found my mother collapsed, she said if they found Willie that meant the other two weren’t coming home.
“Then they found George. Marcella, God love her, was identified from her teeth.” The fire is believed to have started in a space beside a first floor storage room. Drums of cooking oil stored there added fuel to the flames, causing the ceiling to melt and drip on top of patrons below.
As people tried to escape the dropping fireballs the lights went out and many were left trapped at fire exits, some of which were locked.
Selina said: “Exit doors being chained, bars on the windows, flammable material falling down on top of them. It was flammable liquid, cooking oil, pouring down on top of them.” Victims’ families hurt was compounded when a tribunal concluded that the cause of the fire was “probable arson” – a finding erased from the record in 2009.
But even then they were told that new evidence about the source of the fire did not warrant a new inquest.
Selina said: “We were totally let down by the State. It put an added heavy grief on top of what they were already carrying.
“We were always put down, not listened to, it felt like ‘they’re working class people they will just go away’.
“They said in the Dail the survivors and bereaved would get counselling and medical bills paid, but to this day that never happened.”
The loss of three children took its toll on Selina’s parents. Her dad Jimmy, a fireman with Dublin Fire Brigade, died in his 60s.
She recalled: “He was a fireman in Tara Street, in D Watch.
“He was off duty that night, he felt if he was there he would have got them out. Him and my mother blamed one another – he said she should have known Marcella was there.
“My mother had eight children, she lost three that night. I was out of school for a year looking after her, she locked herself in her bedroom.
“My brother Jim took it really bad, he went missing. He was in London, he was living on the streets.” In November 2022, the High Court ruled “unlawful killing” should be available to the jury in the inquests.
Mr Justice Charles Meenan rejected an application by former Stardust manager Eamon Butterly to have it excluded as a possible verdict.
Mr Butterly argued he could be the target of such a verdict but the judge said it could be returned where no person was identified or identifiable.
Selina said: “This inquest was never going to bring George, Willie and Marcella back, but they are with us every day.
“This will be closure for our family in regards to the cause of the fire. They will have a coroner’s report which they have never had.
“We will carry their portraits in there every day.”
Decades long campaign to find the truth
February 14, 1981: A blaze rips through the Stardust nightclub, in Artane, north Dublin, killing 48 young people and injuring more than 200.
November 1981: A tribunal of inquiry into the tragedy, chaired by Mr Justice Ronan Keane, finds arson the probable cause of the fire. The families rejected the finding.
April 2007: The bodies of five victims – Richard Bennett, Michael Ffrench, Murtagh (Murt) Kavanagh, Eamon Loughman and Paul Wade – who were so badly burned they could not be identified initially finally are using DNA techniques.
July 2008: The Government appoints barrister Paul Coffey to conduct an independent examination of the case for a reopened inquiry.
January 2009: The report rules that there was no evidence to prove the cause of the fire was arson. Campaign spokeswoman Antoinette Keegan, who lost her sisters Mary, 19, and Martina, 16, in the fire, said: “We never believed it was arson and it is now recognised.”
February 2014: Two representatives of the victims’ families end a 24-hour occupation of Government Buildings demanding to see then Taoiseach Enda Kenny.
February 2016: Families protest at Dublin Coroner’s Court calling for the inquest into the 48 deaths be reopened, saying they were given a cause of death but no verdict.
March 2017: The Cabinet appoints retired judge Mr Justice Patrick McCartan to conduct an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the tragedy.
November 2017: Families reject the McCartan report’s recommendation that there should be no new inquiry, describing its tone as “rude, aggressive and irrational”.
June 2018: Relatives call for a new inquest into the deaths.
November 2018: Families say they have found new evidence, indicating they will petition the Attorney General for a new inquest.
November 2018: Taoiseach Leo Varadkar tells the Dail that the Attorney General will give full consideration to holding a new inquest.
April 2019: Survivors and families submit new evidence to the Attorney General and formally request a fresh inquest be held.
September 25, 2019: Attorney General Seamus Woulfe contacts families of the victims to say an inquest will be held because of an “insufficiency of inquiry” in the original inquests.
October 2022: High Court rules that verdict of unlawful killing can be returned by a jury.
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