I have given permission to Deputy Horgan to raise on the Adjournment Question No. 154 on today's Order Paper.
Adjournment Debate. - Artane (Dublin) Fire Inquiry.
I am grateful for your permission to raise on the Adjournment the subject matter of Question No. 154 on today's Order Paper which reads:
To ask the Minister for the Environment if relatives of the persons who died and of those who were injured in the Stardust fire will have access at public expense to independent legal representation before the Tribunal.
This question goes back to the Taoiseach, who clearly indicated on television shortly after the tragedy, that it was his intention that adequate legal representation would be provided at public expense during the course of the tribunal's hearings for the relatives of those who died and for those who had been injured in any way in this terrible tragedy.
The matter came up again on 18 February when the Minister for the Environment was proposing the establishment of the tribunal to the House. At column 1987, Volume 326 of the Official Report he said:
The State will provide an independent solicitor and counsel who will be available to act for the next-of-kin of any victim and for any injured party before the tribunal. Any such party who wishes to be represented by this legal service should apply to the solicitor. Every party is of course at liberty to make his own arrangements independently of this State aid.
It is fair to say at the time that sufficient public attention was not focused on this aspect of the proceedings because, as you are aware, there was a very lengthy argument about the terms of reference of the tribunal. Since then, however, problems have arisen in relation to this particular undertaking. They have been given adequate relevance by certain decisions which have been taken by the tribunal and which have created certain anomalies. The tribunal, for example, have ruled — it is not my purpose to question the tribunal's rulings or to challenge them in any way — that one particular group of families are entitled to independent legal representation at their own expense but other claimants shall not be entitled to independent legal representation at their own expense.
I believe this issue is, effectively, a matter for the tribunal because anybody who knows the area concerned will know that the vast majority of the people who might want to be legally represented before this tribunal are not in a position to pay the very large amount of money which has to be paid for the best legal advice nowadays. There is no shame in that. I could not pay it myself and I do not believe that many Members of the House could pay it. The matter that is at issue here is whether the people who have been affected by this fire, some very tragically, are to have, as I said in my question, independent legal representation before the tribunal and, it goes without saying, adequate legal representation.
It is my contention that the commitment which was outlined in broad terms by the Minister in his speech on 18 February, and which has now become known in greater detail to the people in the area, is so far short of adequate that it raises very serious questions about whether the original indication given by the Taoiseach is being adequately implemented. As I understand the situation, two firms of solicitors, Messrs. Hanahoe and Messrs. Bates have been allocated by the Government to represent, at public expense, the next-of-kin of any victims and any injured parties who wish to apply to them. We must remember that almost 50 died in this tragedy, that three times as many were injured, some of them very seriously and, for all I know, many of those who did not suffer physical injury may wish to be represented before the tribunal because of psychological and other damage they may have suffered during the course of what happened.
Only two firms of lawyers are being engaged at public expense to cope with hundreds of people who desire representation. My argument is that the pressure on the time of those two firms will effectively rule out the possibility of independent legal representation, that is representation for each person who wants to be independently represented. I have no doubt that the two firms concerned are of the highest calibre. In connection with Ms. Maura Bates, who was associated with the Coolock Law Centre, local people have the highest respect for her services. It is an ironic comment on the situation that over the last few months the services offered by the Coolock Law Centre have been restricted severely owing to the squeeze on the resources from central funds. On the face of it what the local people are concerned about — I am speaking on the basis of having had consultations with some of them at their request — is the disproportion they see between the legal advice available to them and the legal advice which is available to the other parties in the tribunal.
We have a situation where the legal representation available to several hundred people who have been not just materially but physically affected in the most grievous way by this tragedy is no more than that which is available — not at public expense I accept but at their own expense — to the Butterly family and the Scotts Food Company who are also interested parties before the tribunal. It is their right to hire their own legal teams but the disproportion between what is available to them in terms of their right to representation before the tribunal and in the terms of teams of lawyers they can hire and what is being made available by the Government to the families of those who died and those who have been injured is now very great.
If one divides the number of residents, the number of people who have been physically injured and the families of those who died into the approximate amount of working time available between now and the time the tribunal opens its full hearings it works out at about one hour apiece, certainly not more than one hour-and-a-half. How can any family or individual in that area seriously accept that their right to adequate independent legal representation at public expense before the tribunal can adequately be met even by the most efficient solicitor working under that kind of pressure in that kind of timescale? There is pressure involved and for very good reasons. The Taoiseach and the Government have indicated that they want to have this Tribunal under way within the shortest possible space of time and, indeed, Mr. Justice Keane has indicated that he shares the sense of urgency. That increases the pressure on whatever legal services are available and the more inadequate those legal services the more the pressure will tell on them.
The relatives of those who died and those who have been injured want certain questions asked at the tribunal and, if possible, answered. They do not believe that the structure of the legal advice they have been offered is adequate to ensure that those questions are asked and, if possible, answered. They have made it clear to the Labour Party that nothing short of a very substantial expansion of the legal services which have been made available to them at public expense will quell the unease which they feel about their rights being vindicated before the tribunal. It is not, of course, a tribunal that will assess damages and, to that extent, they are not to the best of my knowledge each looking for his or her own solicitor or his or her own senior counsel. They are practical people and they realise that that kind of arrangement will bog the tribunal down and make it grind slowly to a halt but they are emphatically not satisfied with the vestigial representation that has been accorded to them at present.
Those people are anxious to see a substantial improvement. If the commitment given by the Taoiseach is to be honoured such substantial improvement will have to take place because most of the work will have to be done between now and the time the tribunal opens its full sessions in about one month's time. The next three weeks are crucial for the extensive period of consultation assessment and so on that must be carried out. One of the fundamental reasons why adequate independent legal representation should be made available to those families is that, of course, the findings of the tribunal will have the effect of foreshortening many subsequent court actions that may be brought in relation to damages and liability. Legal representation for those families cannot be independent if it is not independent of the time factor. For that legal representation to be independent of the time factor it must be extended and enlarged to the degree to which each of the families who believe they have a right to have their voice heard by legal proxy before the tribunal will feel they have not been cheated and will feel that any questions they want to put, and which the tribunal is prepared to allow, will be put by a legal team which has heard their side of the case.
I do not believe that is an impossible request or a difficult one to answer. Even a comparatively modest outlay of resources by the Government in this direction would suffice. For example, if the Government were to treble the slight allocation they have made and provided six firms of solicitors, with appropriate senior counsel at the tribunal stage, that would probably meet the reasonable demands of the people concerned. They are pragmatic people and they do not look for the moon. They do not want to turn the tribunal into a bear garden but they want as much justice as the tribunal can provide. They believe that adequate and full legal representation with adequate time for consultation is essential if the tribunal is to have their complete confidence.
The kernel of the question Deputy Horgan put down to me on 26 February was whether or not the next-of-kin of persons who lost their lives or were injured would be given free legal services in relation to hearings of the tribunal. The Government decided that because of the tragic circumstances of the fire and the large number of persons from one area who were affected it was right and proper that free legal service should be provided for the next-of-kin of any victim or of any person injured. The Government feel that the basic need is to ensure that the full facts of what happened on that tragic night at the Stardust Club should be made known and that the families concerned should see that the full facts emerged. It was for this reason that the Government decided to provide a free legal service for the next-of-kin and those injured. Details of this service were made public in a statement issued by the Government Information Services on 27 February. In that statement the Government indicated that it was making available the services of two different sets of legal representatives, solicitors and counsel, and advised persons wishing to avail of those services to contact them.
The decision to make available two sets of legal representatives was taken so as to give persons a choice as to representation. The solicitors nominated by the Government are Messrs. Michael E. Hanahoe and Company of 21 Parliament Street, Dublin 2, and Ms. Maura Bates, Coolock Community Law Centre, North-side Shopping Centre, Dublin 5. The decision to provide a solicitor from the Coolock Community Law Centre has particular significance because of the special place that centre has in the local community who suffered so grieviously from the consequences of the fire. Deputy Horgan in his contribution stressed the importance of the independence of the legal advice available. I feel that the Deputy and members of the community generally will be aware of the special place in the heart of the community that the Coolock Community Law Centre has and the trust and acceptance of its independence in the minds and hearts of the people in that area.
Senior and junior counsel have also been provided. Messrs. P. Carney, Senior Counsel and Mr. Haugh, B. L., will be instructed by Messrs. Hanahoe and Co. and Mr. Geraghty, Senior Counsel and Ms. Clissman, B. L. will be instructed by Ms. Bates of the Coolock Community Law Centre.
The Government statement also advised that any person who did not wish to avail of the services of the legal representatives provided by the Government was, of course, entitled to consult his or her own legal advisers but that such representations would not be covered by the aid being provided by the Government. I am satisfied that the arrangements made by the Government are adequate and appropriate. Two sets of legal representatives, solicitors and counsel, have been made available and at no cost to the next-of-kin of the deceased and of the injured. I might add that facilities of this kind were not made available, for example, to the next-of-kin in the case of the Whiddy Tribunal.
Deputy Horgan mentioned the question of what parties were to be afforded representation before the tribunal. I am glad that he would appear to agree with my assessment of the situation, that the question as to who is represented or not is a matter solely for the tribunal and I have no function in the matter. I accept that the Deputy confirmed this situation earlier. However, for the record and because the question was raised by the Deputy, I should mention that three applications for representation were made to the tribunal on behalf of the next-of-kin who did not wish to avail of the services provided by the solicitors provided by the Government. As I understand it, the tribunal granted permission to one of these applications, which represented the next-of-kin of twenty-one of the dead and 61 of the injured. The tribunal refused the other two applications, which represented one person who died and one person who was injured. The tribunal explained that this was because their work would be unduly protracted if separate representations for the next-of-kin of each individual was allowed. But the tribunal indicated that this ruling would not preclude any person from furnishing them with details of evidence relevant to the inquiry. If, in the light of new circumstances, certain parties felt that they should be represented, these applications would be considered. The fact that persons are not represented at the tribunal does not preclude them from placing any evidence they may have in relation to the fire before the tribunal. It should also be noted that the fact that persons may not be given the right to appear before the tribunal does not in any way infringe on any right they may have to compensation or damages arising out of the fire.
I would add also that, in the case of parties afforded representation before the tribunal, who do not come within the terms of the provision for free legal services made by the Government, section 6 of the Tribunal of Inquiry Evidence (Amendment) Act 1979 makes certain provision regarding costs. It is important that I should put on the record of the House exactly what are those provisions. They are as follows:
(1) where a Tribunal or, if the Tribunal consists of more than one member, the Chairman of the Tribunal, is of opinion that having regard to the findings of the Tribunal and all other relevant matters there are sufficient reasons rendering it equitable to do so, the Tribunal, or the Chairman, may as the case may be, by order direct that the whole or part of the costs of any person appearing before the Tribunal, by counsel or solicitor, as taxed by a taxing master of the High Court, shall be paid to the person by any other person named in the Order;
(2) any sum payable pursuant to an order under this section shall be recoverable as a simple contract debt in any court of competent jurisdiction, and
any sum payable by the Minister for Finance pursuant to an Order under this section shall be paid out of moneys provided by the Oireachtas.
It is important to clarify that. I wish to reiterate that the Government's concern is that the full facts should be established as to what happened on that tragic night. The House may be assured that any recommendations made by the tribunal will be acted on immediately. I want to assure the House further, and the country generally, that my Department will co-operate fully with the tribunal and will make available any files or documents which the tribunal may feel would be of assistance in their task of getting to the full truth and the full facts of this tragic incident in the Stardust Club.
The Dáil adjourned at 9 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 5 March 1981.