Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 4 October 2016
122. Deputy Thomas P. Broughan asked the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the steps she will take to ensure the coroner's inquest into the deaths of 48 young persons at the Stardust nightclub in February 1981 will be reopened; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [28587/16]
View answerI understand that inquests into the deaths of the victims of the Stardust Fire were held between 1 and 4 March 1982 by the Dublin City Coroner, sitting with a jury, and that verdicts were returned. Under the Coroners Act, 1962, a Coroner is a statutory officer exercising quasi-judicial functions in relation to which he/she is independent and neither I nor my Department has any role in individual cases or in reviewing the verdict in any particular case.
As stated in the Programme for a Partnership Government, "Full regard will be had to any new evidence which emerges which would be likely to definitely establish the cause of the fire at Stardust".
