Half a lifetime of pain

CHRISTINE Keegan was just 45-years-of-age when she lost her two teenage daughters, Mary and Martina, in the Stardust fire in Artane. Now aged 80, she has spent almost half her life campaigning for justice for the victims of the tragedy.

Just days after the 35th anniversary of the disaster next month, Christine will find herself back on the streets protesting with other Stardust relatives. The struggle was to prove too much for her late husband, John, cruelly taken from her by cancer in 1986 at the age of 49.

But somehow, against the odds, Christine has found the strength to continue her fight. It’s a fight that has seen many false dawns, where glimmers of hope quickly faded and expectations came crashing to the ground. 

In the aftermath of the 1981 fire, which claimed the lives of 48 young people and injured over 200 more, there was a Garda investigation and a tribunal of inquiry, each raising more questions than answers for the families. It would be a number of decades later before the original tribunal’s finding of probable arson would be corrected and read into the Dáil record. Officially, the cause of the fire is still not known, despite Stardust campaigners claiming to have uncovered significant new evidence in recent years.

To date, calls for a new inquiry into Ireland’s single greatest fire tragedy have gone unheeded by successive governments. 

Separately, gardaí began an investigation in 2013 after a complaint was made by a researcher working with the Stardust Victims’ Committee. She had alleged that several witnesses had committed perjury and attempted to pervert the course of justice when giving evidence before the original tribunal of inquiry in 1981. A Garda file on the matter was sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions last August. 

However, in September 2015, the DPP’s office indicated that no charges would be brought in relation to these allegations. At the request of the victims’ committee, a review of this decision was carried out by the DPP but was ultimately upheld. 

In a letter to Christine Keegan on December 10 last, the DPP’s office set out the legal issues that had to be taken into consideration but explained it was not their practice at the time to provide the reasons for a decision not to prosecute.

The decision pre-dates an EU Victims’ Directive which came into force in November 2015. It allows victims of crime to formally request reasons from the DPP for not proceeding with a prosecution.

Christine’s daughter, Antoinette, who was severely injured in the nightclub fire, said they were “devastated” when they received the news.

Earlier this month, Christine Keegan sent a strongly worded letter to the Minister for Justice, Frances Fitzgerald, highlighting their ongoing grievances.

 “If you imagine we are going to let this go and disappear, you are very wrong,” she wrote.

The Stardust Victims’ Committee plans to picket the Coroner’s Court on February 18. A spokesperson said a number of families wish to have the inquests into the deaths of their loved ones reopened.