In September 2012, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), in McDermott and Others against Ireland and Keegan v Ireland, declared as inadmissible applications taken by family members of the victims of the 1981 Stardust disaster stating that their applications were out of time.
The applicants complained under numerous Articles of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), including Article 2, the right to life, about deficiencies in the Stardust investigation and that those responsible had not been punished.
Time line of events:
14 February 1981 - A fatal fire took place at the Stardust nightclub in Dublin. 48 people died and 214 people were injured as a result.
November 1981 – A Tribunal of Inquiry headed by former Chief Justice Ronan Keane concluded that the fire was probably caused by arson.
1983 – Relying on the Tribunal’s original finding of arson, the Stardust nightclub succeeded in a claim of malicious damage against the state.
1985 – A Compensation Tribunal was established and awards were made to 823 survivors of the fire averaging at just over £12,000 per person.
1991 - The Compensation Tribunal published a report which recorded general conclusions and the total sum of compensation paid.
2009 –The Coffey Report, an independent re-examination of the Tribunal's findings, found there was no evidence to support the finding that the fire was started deliberately and the public record was corrected to remove the original arson conclusion. Mr Coffey found that due to the passage of time and lack of physical evidence, it was not in the public interest to re-open the Public Inquiry.
Under the Court’s admissibility criteria, applicants must bring an application to the ECtHR within 6 months of exhausting domestic remedies. The Court considered from what date this time could be considered to run.
The applicants considered their applications to be within the time limit and argued that the refusal of the State, through the Coffey Report, to conduct a new inquiry constituted the final domestic decision. The Court dismissed this argument holding that the Coffey report did not confer any further investigative obligation on the State.
The Court held that the six month time limit was considered to run, at the very least, after the 1991 when the compensation report was published as it must have been obvious at this stage that there was not any realistic possibility of additional investigative steps being initiated by the State.