State recognition that Stardust victims were wronged is a start

Nothing is as cold or as suffocating as anonymous and unaccountable officialdom. In the guise of a state it can be an irresistible force killing off all innate humane reflexes. But in the love of the Stardust families for their lost, the State met an immovable object.

Up against this undying fidelity, the great wall of statutory resistance finally crumbled with the Taoiseach’s apology.

That it took 43 years of suffering and anguish piled upon heartbreak to deliver it leaves an indelible stain.

The shocking mistreatment of the relatives in the aftermath of the tragedy and over ensuing decades can not be dissolved with the utterance of the word “sorry”.

But recognition of a grievous wrong can be the foundation stone for getting it right from now on.

As Simon Harris said: “It is to our great and eternal shame that far from the warm embrace of a caring State, the Stardust family experienced a cold shoulder, a deaf ear and two generations of struggle for truth and justice.”

The disregard and stony resistance to any compassionate impulse towards the families from governments and officials over the years was honestly summed up by Fine Gael TD for Dublin Bay North, Richard Bruton.

Speaking on the injustice, he said: “We who worked in the constituency failed them and I acknowledge that fully.”

He said the initial allegation of arson was a “slap in the face” to the families, adding that their anger with the system is fully justified.

Why the grieving relatives had to go through so many torturous hoops, and why it took so long for any semblance of justice to come to their cause are questions that will have to be addressed.

As Mr Harris put it, the State failed the families when “you needed us the most”.

To have had to live under the shadow of Justice Ronan Keane’s finding that the fire was the result of arson was just one of the many insults the families were exposed to.

Mr Harris said he hoped the apology might mark a turning point and, from now on, the process of putting things to right could begin.

Tragically, there is no bringing back the young men and women who never came home. They now live on as memories in the hearts of those who loved them.

But it is clear there were grave breaches in safety, and state efforts to establish the full facts were scandalously inadequate. Contradictory and unsatisfactory accounts of what transpired were left unchallenged.

The fact that the most powerful people in the country allowed such failures to go unchecked remains an “indictment of our integrity as a nation”, said Green Party leader Eamon Ryan.

The failures in the Stardust disaster tragically resulted in fatalities.

Any failure to learn from them would be unconscionable.