State archives: Taoiseach’s office wanted to avoid Stardust compensation, records reveal

The Taoiseach’s department wanted to wash its hands of compensation claims for victims of the Stardust fire disaster over fears it would be chaotic and controversial, State papers have revealed.

In a Government memo from October 3, 1985, officials in Garret FitzGerald’s office warned that decisions on payments should be kept “as far as possible” from his desk.

Forty-eight people died in the 1981 St Valentine’s Day fire at the nightclub in Artane, Dublin, and hundreds more were injured with about 300 making claims against the State.