A jury has been urged to return a verdict of unlawful killing in the case of the 48 people who lost their lives in the Stardust nightclub fire, as the closing speeches by legal representatives on behalf of the bereaved families commenced in the Dublin District Coroner’s Court.
Michael O’Higgins SC said the credibility of Stardust manager Eamon Butterly had been “shredded beyond redemption” during the inquest, while Des Fahy KC urged the jury to begin the process of giving dignity back to the victims who had died in “apocalyptic” circumstances.
The inquest, which began almost a year ago, has now entered its final stages before coroner Dr Myra Cullinane and the jury.
Mr O’Higgins told the jury on Thursday that they should bring in a verdict of unlawful killing, but he said that he first wanted to reflect on why everyone concerned was here 43 years later.
“Women: mothers, daughters, siblings, women possessed of indomitable spirit,” Mr O’Higgins said, namechecking such people as Christine Keegan, who lost her daughters Martina and Mary, Bridget McDermott, who lost her daughter Marcella and sons George and William, and Gertrude Barrett, who lost her son Michael.
Mr O’Higgins told the jury that they were entitled to bring in a verdict of unlawful killing so the families can be satisfied that the basis upon which their loved ones died is accurately recorded.
“The question you are being asked isn’t who caused an unlawful killing, that is not the question you are asking. You are answering a different question: how did the deceased die? And your verdict doesn’t apportion liability or exonerate an individual, and this court has no business making a finding that blames somebody or exonerates somebody else,” he said.
He said that evidence had been heard about exit doors being locked or “mock locked” in the Stardust, as it was claimed that people were getting in for free. However, he said that the inquest could not find a single witness, including Eamon Butterly, who had ever seen someone getting in for free through the exit doors.
He also said that toilet windows were blocked up with steel sheets and bars, which almost turned the place “into a fortress”.
Fire safety
Turning to the matter of the planning permission for the club, Mr O’Higgins said that no architect had supervised the conversion of the building. He said that there were fire safety regulations in place at the time, including such conditions that exit doors could be secured only by automatic fastenings, and if chains and padlocks were used, a keyboard had to be provided on which the chains could be hung.
Mr O’Higgins reminded the jury that Eamon Butterly had said he knew nothing about these regulations, as he did not read the guidelines.
“If you’re going to build and operate a premises such as this, if you don’t have the time and inclination to be a micromanager and have your hand on every single pulse, it’s not too much to ask that you have some type of structure there that catches these things, but it didn’t happen,” he said.
Concerning the locking of fire exits when patrons were on the premises, Mr O’Higgins reminded the jury that Mr Butterly had said this practice was going on for two to three weeks before the fire, while he had said that the practice of “mock locking” the doors by draping chains over the panic bars had been in place as long as he could remember.
Mr O’Higgins said Mr Butterly had initially been adamant that the locking of doors was all down to head doorman Tom Kennan on his own initiative, but he later said that the policy of keeping doors locked until 11.30pm on any given night was forced on him as people were getting in for free.
Mr O’Higgins said Mr Butterly later gave evidence that the policy was a joint initiative between himself and the staff, although the witness could not say how much of the policy he was willing to own. Mr O’Higgins also said that Mr Butterly had accepted that the evidence he had given to the inquest was contradictory to evidence he had given to the original tribunal in 1981.
“The effect of it is that his credibility is shredded beyond redemption,” Mr O’Higgins said, going on to say that there was a huge conflict of evidence between Mr Butterly’s account of the exit doors and nearly everyone else’s, and the account put forward by others was far more credible than what he was saying.
In his closing submission to the jury, Mr Fahy said that it was clear from the evidence that there was a culture of door locking happening years before the fire and this was allowed to continue in one form or another right up to that night.
“A cloud of half-truths and confusion hangs over any proper assessment of what happened in relation to those exit doors on this night. It may not be possible to be 100 per cent certain about anything in relation to those doors,” Mr Fahy said.
These 48 people lost their dignity because of the cruel and inhumane way in which they died.
He said there was a culture of locking doors when paying customers were inside at least 18 months before the fire.
“This grave situation with locked and obviously fatally dangerous exit doors did not drop out of the sky in early 1981, as some of the evidence might have you believe. This was endemic and longstanding,” he said.
Mr Fahy referenced the evidence of the doormen, such as Francis Kenny, who told the inquest he had never been given a fire drill and was not told what to do in an emergency. Mr Fahy said that Mr Kenny had given evidence that the only thing he had been shown was how to loop a chain around the panic bar of a door to make it look locked.
“What sort of upside-down world was this, where a new doorman was told how to trick teenagers into thinking an exit door was locked but was never taught how to get them out of a building safely if there was a fire?” asked Mr Fahy.
He said there had been a failure not to have emergency doors that were all unlocked, unchained and unobstructed. He said that this failure was a substantial cause of the deaths, and he told the jury they were entitled to consider this failure alongside other key failures, including the absence of any preparation of the staff and the use of inappropriate carpet tiles on the walls.
“If you come to those findings on the evidence, you can properly conclude that all those who died were unlawfully killed,” he said, adding that there was an “apocalyptic, frantic and ultimately catastrophic scene around the exit doors”.
“These 48 people lost their dignity because of the cruel and inhumane way in which they died. You can now start the process of giving them that dignity back,” Mr Fahy told the jury.
Brenda Campbell KC said the carpet tiles on the walls were wholly unsuitable as wall coverings, as they plainly did not meet the requirements of the chief fire officer, and it ought to have been known at the time that they were unsuitable.
“The presence of those tiles substantially contributed to the rapid spread of that fire, and the presence of those carpet tiles therefore directly caused or substantially contributed to the deaths of the 48 who never came home,” said Ms Campbell said.
The inquest continues on Friday in the Pillar Room of the Rotunda Hospital.
