Families’ ‘annoyance’ over Haughey
SAYS BLAZE SURVIVOR
to what the families had said when he met them on Saturday.
“He’s younger than Stardust but he did his homework,” she said.
“I thank him for that as the first minister who ever listened to us. I went to visit the graves at the weekend and it was the first time I could go there in 43 years without feeling guilty and say, ‘We did it for you’.”
Lisa Lawlor, who was orphaned at 17 months old when her mother and father Maureen and Francis died in the fire, carried 49 red roses into the Dail to represent the 48 victims as well as the unborn baby of Caroline Carey.
Remembered
Hugh and John Muldoon remembered their sister Kathleen yesterday following the apology.
John noted how both his parents died within the last 13 months and were not here to see justice delivered.
MARGARET Ffrench was in her early 40s when her son Michael was killed in the Stardust fire.
The mother (84) is now frail, small, in a wheelchair, hard of hearing – but her beloved boy is forever in her heart, always 18.
Her love and loyalty for Michael – her first-born child – is such that she found the strength to make it into the Dail yesterday.
She was there to hear the state apologise for his death, 43 years on from the biggest disaster in Irish history.
The sight of her in the chamber epitomised the endless fighting spirit of those families of the 48, who had made this day happen.
They had waited long enough; they had grown up, aged, many had died, but they never gave up belief, hope. And yesterday, after last week’s landmark inquest heard all 48 had been unlawfully killed, the state got to its knees and finally said: “Sorry.”
The lyrics of You’ll Never Walk Alone – the Stardust campaigners’ anthem for decades – at last felt real: “At the end of the storm, there’s a golden sky, and the sweet, silver song of the lark.”
The families were delighted, in a clenched way. The phrase I kept hearing was: “not before time.” It was an apology that was sincere and full.
The new Taoiseach did not hold back in an emotional, honest, unequivocal expression of sorrow that acknowledged the terrible
FAMILIES of Stardust victims have expressed “annoyance” over former Taoiseach Charlie Haughey’s son Sean speaking about the tragedy.
Mr Haughey was Taoiseach and the local TD of the area when the fire occurred on February 14 1981.
A tribunal of inquiry, wrongs of the state’s backwards response to Stardust.
The Artane disco blaze happened a few years before Harris was even born, but he had spent time getting to know the victims through the pen portraits of their inquest.
Dressed in a sombre black suit, he recalled how Michael Barrett (17) was “wise beyond his years” while Carol Bissett was “a girl guide, quiet in her way”.
David Flood was “a rocker at heart”, Martina Keegan had hoped to be a model, while Willie McDermott was “a gentle giant.” One of the most poignant mentions was the mention of four months’ pregnant Caroline Carey who
“had recently found out she was going to be a mother.” Her family asked him to say that her unborn baby was the 49th victim.
Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald choked back tears as she imagined the teens heading out that night, singing out their goodbyes to their parents: “‘Love you Ma, Love you Da’”.
In her address she said that an apology “won’t bring them back”, but it is “an official acknowledgement of the wrong inflicted on those already suffering the worst”.
She added: “For those who have suffered Stardust, it was a basic human right.” commissioned by him and overseen by Mr Justice Ronan Keane, concluded that “the more probable explanation of the fire is that it was caused deliberately”.
In the Dail yesterday, Sean Haughey said that he “genuinely believes that I consistently followed up any of the issues the committee asked me to pursue.”
Speaking last night, one of the Stardust survivors Antoinette Keegan said that a “lot of the families” were annoyed about him speaking.
“It wasn’t his place here today,” she said.