1980s Stardust evidence under pressure

PB October/November 2023 October/November 2023 11

Manager Butterly’s

“self-serving”

evidence, as it was

described by Michael

O’Higgins SC,

especially about the

practice of locking

doors, has been

unravelling at the

Coroner’s inquest

t has taken over forty years but ﬁ nally the

general manager of the Stardust has been

called to account for his role in the tragedy

that killed 48 young people, and injured

128 more, on Valentine’s Day, 1981.

Eamon Butterly, who ran the Artane nightclub

owned by his late father, Patrick, turned up to the

inquest at the Rotunda hospital grounds in Dublin

to face days of gruelling examination by lawyers

acting for the families of the bereaved.

Butterly was brash and combative from the

outset, displaying what some of the families

perceived as barely concealed arrogance, as he

sought to blame everyone but himself for the

disaster.

As days of interrogation rolled on, Butterly’s

“self-serving” evidence, as it was described by

Michael O’Higgins SC, steadily unravelled.

On 28 September, 78-year-old Butterly was

forced to reject the barrister’s accusation that he

was “telling lies” and that his account of what

happened under his watch before, during and

after the ﬁ re was “vague”, “contradictory” and

“not founded on the truth”.

However, even what Butterly did accept as true

was wrongdoing by his company and the

management which he led.

What has emerged so far was a policy, which

Butterly oversaw, of minimal adherence to basic

health and safety laws and regulations and an

apparent reluctance to pay for the professional

advice required for the venture. The original

architect, WDC White, who drew up the plans to

turn the Scott’s Food processing factory into a

huge disco, left when Patrick Butterly refused to

pay his fees.

“When we failed to reach agreement on the

issue of my fee I parted company with Mr

Butterly”, the original and ﬂ awed tribunal of

inquiry into the Stardust ﬁ re was told in 1981.

Instead, Harold Gardner, an upholsterer by

trade, was brought in to deal with Dublin

Corporation and its Chief Fire Oﬃ cer. Eamon

Butterly agreed that Gardner was not a qualiﬁ ed

architect and that he was drafted in to supervise

the job because he owed his father money. One

consequence of this thriftiness was that

ﬂ ammable carpet tiles were used on the walls,

accelerating the spread of the ﬁ re.

Butterly was forced to concede that a number

of the ﬁ re doors were locked and others ‘mock-

locked’ (with chains draped over push bars to

make them appear locked) preventing the exit of

patrons trying to escape the ﬁ re. He blamed the

NEWS

It was utterly Butterly

By Frank Connolly

head doorman, his uncle, Tom Kennan, for

introducing the policy of locking the doors. Asked

why he told the Garda in the days after the tragedy

that the practice had only been in place for three

weeks when in fact it had been routine for over a

year, Butterly had no clear answer. He said the

windows in the toilets had been covered with

steel a few weeks before the disaster as, he

claimed, people were passing in weapons and

drink to patrons.

He told the 1981 tribunal chaired by Judge

Ronan Keane that, in the immediate aftermath of

the ﬁ re, he recalled that Kennan had told him that

he had unlocked all the exits at 11.30 p.m. on the

night and there was relief all round that this had

been done.

“Wasn’t it a good job, Tom, you opened the

doors?” Butterly had asked.

At the current inquest hearings, Butterly

continued to insist that Kennan had opened all

the doors at 11.30 p.m. an hour and a half before

the ﬁ re ﬁ rst broke out. This was untrue and at

least three exits, 1, 5 and 6, were locked after this

time. He agreed that his father, Patrick, had

warned him some time previously that the policy

of locking the exits could cause “trouble”.

He told O’Higgins that he still believed that

Kennan had unlocked the doors before the ﬁ re.

However, he did not tell the gardaí in 1981 that

the doors were locked earlier in the night.

“They didn’t ask me. I just wanted to make sure

they knew the doors were unlocked at the time of

the ﬁ re”, Butterly said.

“What is signiﬁ cant is that you didn’t tell them

there was a policy of locking doors. You didn’t tell

them doors were locked…You omitted that

deliberately”, said O’Higgins.

“Well you can say I omitted it deliberately. I

disagree with you”, Butterly replied.

O’Higgins questioned why he had told gardaí

the policy of draping chains over the push bars

on the exit doors had been in place for three

weeks, when it had been policy for years. This

account was “self-serving, it was untrue and it

was said for a particular purpose”, the lawyer

suggested.

1980s Stardust

evidence under

pressure

Strdust mnger, Emon Butterly

12 October/November 2023 October/November 2023 PB

“What purpose?”, Butterly asked.

“To mislead the guards into thinking this was

all something that occurred three weeks ago

when it had been happening for a very long time”,

O’Higgins said.

“No. I didn’t mislead the guards”, replied

Butterly.

“I am going to suggest to you the reason why

your instructions to Mr Kennan originally are so

vague, the reasons about why your account as to

how the doors were opened is also vague and

completely contradictory, and the reason why

you’re so vague about the conversations you had

after the event is because they are not founded

on truth”.

“Are you saying I am telling lies?”, asked Mr

Butterly.

“Yes, I am”.

“I am not telling lies”.

Weeks before the ﬁ re, on 23 January, Patrick

Butterly received a letter from Dublin Corporation

warning him “unless assurances that the exit

ways are immediately available at all times when

public are on the premises [are provided] it will

be necessary to institute proceedings”.

As general manager of the Stardust, Eamon

Butterly replied on 27th January: “I personally

take great care to ensure all exits are clear… I

assure you all exits will be kept clear when the

public are on the premises”.

Clearly the exits were not ‘immediately

available’ on the night of the ﬁ re, suggested

O’Higgins, to which Butterly replied:

“I made them available, all exits available by

Tom Kennan at 11.30 p.m. on the night of the ﬁ re”,

said Butterly.

“You were locking exits”, O’Higgins said.

“I wasn’t locking any exits,” Butterly insisted.

O’Higgins compared the haste with which

Butterly had submitted insurance claims

amounting to £3 million within days of the ﬁ re to

the delay and failure to comply with the ﬁ re and

other regulations. Butterly replied that there was

a time limit on submitting an insurance claim.

The inquest has also heard evidence about the

cause of the ﬁ re which was ﬁ rst noticed, inside

the Stardust, on seating in an alcove at around

1.40 p.m. The Keane tribunal ruled, wrongly, that

the ﬁ re was caused deliberately when someone

set ﬁ re to the seating. In fact, a number of

witnesses saw a ﬁ re in the roof space soon after

midnight.

Noel Scully, who was a 36-year-old service

engineer at the time of the disaster, told the

inquest he had just gone to bed at his home on

Kilmore Close, just 600 yards from the Stardust,

at about 1.00 a.m. when he “heard a noise

coming from the back of the house”.

He told gardaí in his statement made three

days later that the sound was “like wet sheets

blowing in the wind on the line” and told the

inquests it was like “bottles bursting”.

“I looked out and I saw black smoke coming

from the direction of the Stardust. I got out of bed

and dressed. As I left the room my wife told me it

was twenty past one”, he told gardaí.

Asked if he was “certain” about his timings, Mr

Scully said the radio clock in his and his wife’s

bedroom “kept pretty good time” and that it had

shown the correct time when the morning news

came on.

Pressed again on his timings by Sean Guerin

SC for the families of nine of the dead, he said: “I

saw the ﬁ re before I left the house. That’s what

got me out of bed. So the ﬁ re had started quite

deﬁ nitely before 1.30.

Investigations carried out by lawyers for the

Stardust families in the early 2000s, and reported

by this writer at the time, revealed a series of ﬁ re

safety concerns in the months before the ﬁ re.

Three weeks before the ﬁ re, a musician and

others saw sparks coming out of the ceiling over

the stage and dance ﬂ oor. Up to 2000 people

were crowded into the nightclub on that occasion,

more than 600 in excess of what its licence

permitted.

A storeroom in the roof space adjoined a lamp

room where the electrics were located. The

storeroom was packed with ﬂ ammable cooking

oils, polishes, plastic knives and forks and other

materials. The electrics were faulty and

electricians had been called to repair them over

a number of months before the ﬁ re.

Following an investigation by Gillick Fire Safety

Ltd, in 2003, ﬁ re consultant Patricia O’Carroll

concluded; “The lighting of the stage area, with

spotlights and ﬂ oodlights, represented a high

concentration of electrical load at a high level and

fed from an ad hoc arrangement of connectors

and ﬂ ex. This was potentially a source of an

electrical fault and constituted a ﬁ re hazard”.

According to the report, all four of the common

causes of ﬁ re were present in the Stardust,

namely: “over current, arcing, short circuit or

earth leakage”.

“The likely cause of the ﬁ re was an electrical

fault originating in the lamp room that ignited the

ﬂ ammable material in the store room next door”,

the report said. It noted that “there was electrical

overload in the lamp room; the store and contents

were in the roof space adjacent to the lamp room

with no ﬁ re separation”.

A map provided to the Keane tribunal was

wrongly advised that the lamp room and store

room were located in the basement area of the

Stardust. There was, however, no basement area.

When he was asked about the location of the

lamp room and store room during his evidence in

late September, Butterly said he recalled that

they were on the ground ﬂ oor. His recollections,

accurate or otherwise, about this and other

issues will be the subject of further examination

over the coming weeks. The inquest is chaired by

Dublin City Coroner, Dr Myra Cullinane.

Butterly told the Keane

tribunal that he recalled

that the head doorman

had, in the aftermath of

the ﬁ re, told him that he

had unlocked all the exits

at 11.30 p.m. and there was

relief all round that this had

been done

Ptrick Butterly (decesed) nd his son

Emon Butterly t the lst dy of the

Strdust Inquiry in November 1981.

Photo: Peter Thursﬁ led