Over a hundred people gathered for a special anniversary service today to remember the 48 young people who perished in the Stardust disaster.
Families and survivors joined together to pay tribute to the dead, who were mostly aged in their teens and early 20s when they died in the Valentine's nightclub blaze in north Dublin 26 years ago.
Candles were lit during the simple memorial mass, held poignantly in a small parish church close to the Stardust Memorial Garden. At a moving ceremony in St Joseph's Church, Coolock, Fr Kevin Moore prayed that the victims had found peaceful thoughts in heaven. He also prayed for the injured who survived that night.
"The nightmare of what happened will never leave them," he said. The fire, which engulfed the Stardust disco in Artane on St Valentine's Eve, 1981, impacted on communities across north Dublin.
Almost every family in the area was directly affected by the blaze, with the majority of the dead coming from the largely working-class areas of Coolock, Bonnybrook, Artane and Donnycarney.
"In the intervening 26 years, life has moved on and people have moved on, but on a day like today that sense of loss, in some respect, is as deeply felt by those who lost a loved one that night," added Fr Moore. Earlier this month, the remains of five unidentified victims of the fire, who were buried in a communal grave, were exhumed for DNA testing.
It is hoped the bodies of Richard Bennett, Michael French, Murtagh Kavanagh, Eamon Loughman and Paul Wade will be identified and reburied in individual graves in less than three months.
Fr Moore prayed for the five families and that they could now have closure after their anxious wait.
The Stardust Survivors' Committee has vowed to carry on its campaign for a new inquiry in to the fire.
Survivors who tried to escape the blaze through the toilet windows, found they were blocked with metal grilles and steel plates to ensure people did not get into the disco without paying.
Investigations into the fire also found one of the emergency exits was chained and padlocked, while two others were obstructed by skips or tables.
In 1982, after 122 days of evidence at a hearing, former Chief Justice Ronan Keane concluded that arson was the most likely cause of the fire. The findings have always been contested by survivors, with independent experts now backing their claims.