Terry Prone: The day the truth burst, after 43 years of constant suffering for the Stardust families

The unlawful killing verdict from the Stardust inquests has proven to everyone what the victims' families had always known, writes Terry Prone

Antoinette Keegan at the Dublin District Coroner's Court after the Stardust Inquests jury delivered verdicts of unlawful killing in the case of all 48 victims who died in the fire. Photo: Sasko Lazarov Farrell / © RollingNews.ie

A dreary hotel room. Eleven days after the Stardust fire. Parents. Grandparents. Sisters. Brothers. Arriving for a meeting I had been asked to facilitate.

They later became a forceful and relentless group, but that afternoon, they were individuals with nothing in common but agony. Some were angry. Some were trying to mind a weeping parent. Some had their pain muffled by GP-administered Valium. One or two of the older ones had self-anaesthetised using alcohol.