A former senior doorman at the Stardust nightclub has told an inquest that he cannot say whether the exit doors were unlocked on the night of the fire which killed 48 people.
Deputy head doorman Leo Doyle was continuing his evidence to the jury at the Dublin District Coroner’s Court on Wednesday, during the inquest into the blaze that swept through the Stardust nightclub in the early hours of February 14th 1981.
Bernard Condon SC, representing a number of the families of the victims, referenced a statement made by Mr Doyle to gardaí, in which Mr Doyle said when a large curtain was down in the nightclub closing off one section, exits one and six were locked and chained while the club was open.
“I can’t remember saying that,” Mr Doyle replied.
Mr Condon suggested that it was unlikely that the gardaí “went off on a flight of fancy”, and he put it to the witness that he did say this about the doors. Mr Doyle replied that he did not remember, but if it was in his statement, he must have done.
He went on to say he did not remember being told to keep exit one and six closed. He said he did not even know that exit one existed.
“If that is true, then two gardaí fabricated your statement,” Mr Condon said.
“I’m not saying that either. I don’t remember,” Mr Doyle replied, restating that he did not remember telling the gardaí that.
Chains
Mr Condon again referenced Mr Doyle’s original statements, in which Mr Doyle said that, on the night of the fire, he could not say if the locks and chains were off the doors as he did not check them.
“We used to unlock the doors, chain the two chains together with a lock and flip the chain over to give the impression they were locked,” he said.
“You can’t say if they were unlocked?” asked Mr Condon.
“I can’t say, no,” replied Mr Doyle.
Mr Condon asked him if he accepted that this practice of “mock locking” the doors was inherently dangerous, to which Mr Doyle replied that he did not accept this.
“I didn’t think there would be a tragedy like that night. Forty-two years ago, there was no training for that,” he said.
Mr Doyle said that he had no idea who came up with the idea of draping the chains over the doors to give the impression that they were locked.
Mr Condon said that in a statement made by another doorman, Michael Kavanagh, Mr Kavanagh had said that a number of weeks before the fire, a number of people got in for free through an exit door and “Eamon Butterly was mad over this”, and “instructions came down from the top” that chains and locks were not to be removed from the doors on any night that a disco was on.
Mr Doyle confirmed that if such instructions came down, they “came from the top”.
Mr Condon said it was practically impossible for the jury to now know the condition of those doors, and they were not able to rely on anything a Stardust doorman said.
“I am telling the truth,” Mr Doyle said.
The inquest continues on Thursday in the Pillar Room of the Rotunda Hospital.
