Just weeks after the fire enveloped the Stardust nightclub in Artane in north Dublin in April 1981, Eamon Butterly, the nightclub’s manager, was quoted as saying that he saw no reason why the complex should not be reopened. 

‘‘But if I were building it again I would build it in concrete which does not burn,” he said.

Those comments appeared on the front page of The Evening Herald beside a photograph of three coffins containing the remains of three victims from the one family: Marcella, George and William McDermott.

In all, 25 men and 23 women died in the fire. Eleven others were badly disfigured or disabled and 214 people were injured. The average age of those who died was 19.

Outside of the various legal processes and inquests, it was one of the few public comments made by Butterly about the tragedy. His father Paddy, who owned the nightclub, said even less. 

Paddy Butterly was a wealthy and well-connected man. He started as a market gardener, branching into jam, property, pubs and clubs. He bought and sold farms, imported Polish coal, developed a successful beetroot bottling factory and opened an industrial estate. He had interests in horses, backed an interior design company, financed hotels and sold chocolate to supermarkets.

Jack Lynch asked Paddy Butterly to join Taca, the Fianna Fáil fundraising initiative for wealthy businessmen. Butterly recounted that story in a self-published memoir entitled From Radishes to Riches.  “We were all Fianna Fáilers,” Butterly said in the book, of which just 90 copies were printed for friends and family.

From Radishes to Riches devoted just four paragraphs to the Stardust fire. Two of those paragraphs dealt with the initial tribunal led by Mr Justice Ronan Keane, and with Butterly’s financial loss.

Based on the Keane Tribunal’s finding that the fire was “probably” caused by arson, the  Butterly family received just over IRE£580,000 in compensation in 1983 after taking a claim against Dublin Corporation. 

However, in his book, Paddy Butterly said the money went on legal fees (in the tribunal, he was represented at the tribunal by Niall McCarthy, a future Supreme Court judge, and Peter Sutherland, the future attorney general). 

He wrote: ‘‘All we got was our insurance money from the fire and that went to pay the legal bill. So we ended up with nothing.”

He concluded: ‘‘The only good thing the tribunal did us was to prove that it was malicious damage and that we were not responsible for the deaths of the people there.”

Butterly said people used to leave flowers at the site of the Stardust and ‘‘I always felt a little bit that I was being blamed, even though we were cleared in the tribunal’’. 

Shortly after the book was published, Paddy Butterly passed away. 

His son never managed to open a new nightclub on the site, but the family did open a pub and operated an adjacent business park. Eamonn Butterly’s brother, Colm, now deceased, ran much of the businesses. 

In the decades after the fire, the family’s business dealings continued to be successful. By 2009, the main company, Butterly Business Park, had assets worth more than €10.9 million and had retained profits of €6.9 million. The company owned another company, Butterly Enterprises, which in turn, had two subsidiaries, Patrick Butterly & Sons and Patrick Butterly & Sons (Farms).

However, AIB foreclosed on the business park in 2011, appointing a receiver on foot of a 2008 charge. The site would ultimately be acquired by Cairn Homes, who sold it again, and it is currently in the possession of international investors.

Colm Butterly, meanwhile, ended up battling EBS in the courts as it sought to take possession of his home. 

Most of the companies within the wider group have since been dissolved. Eamon Butterly now divides his time between Dublin and Tenerife, where it has been reported he has property interests.

He gave evidence for 30 hours over eight days last September to the coroner’s inquest, an inquest after which the jury delivered a verdict of unlawful killing for each of the 48 people who died as a result of the fire at the Stardust. 

As the inquest entered its final days, Butterly sought permission to bring judicial review proceedings challenging decisions made by the coroner to allow the jury return a verdict of unlawful killing. His action was not successful.

Dr Myra Cullinane, the coroner who presided over the inquests, is obliged to inform the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) of the jury’s verdicts, although it is unclear if the matter will be progressed further after that.

However, that verdict provided vindication for the families and survivors of the tragedy and ultimately led to a state apology. They fought the system, and they refused to stop campaigning and to stop fighting. They refused to buckle, despite being let down repeatedly by the State.

Last week, RTÉ broadcast an excellent three-part documentary on the Stardust fire and the decades-long battle for the truth. It was a chilling reminder of how a system, and political power, unchecked, can cause immense damage and derail the truth from emerging. 

As Simon Harris said in the state apology, the Stardust families were “forced to endure a living nightmare”.

At one point during his direct evidence at the inquest, Eamon Butterly said: “We thought it was one of the safest places around.”

When asked if there was anything he would have done differently, he said he would never have got involved in converting the premises into a nightclub.

“I would have knocked it down and built a new one and… do something different with it,” he said.

“That’s the one thing you’d do differently?” barrister Michael O’Higgins asked. 

Butterly replied: “I would, yeah.” 

*****

Elsewhere last week, Tom caught up with Niall Molloy at the margins of The Real Deal conference. Molloy is the chief executive of Echelon Data Centres, which recently secured a reported $850 million investment from Starwood Capital, a deal that valued his business at $2.5 billion. He told Tom that global tech giants are making decisions now on the location of the computing power needed for the AI revolution, and that it is a big opportunity if Ireland can overcome “extreme zealotry” in policymaking.

In a connected industry, Ireland remains years behind European peers on offshore wind. But development giants like Denmark’s Ørsted and the UK’s Corio Generation believe that lag can help this country avoid the “same mistakes” made by earlier adopters. Our new London Editor Michael Cogley had the story.

The link between data centres and green energy last week was Microsoft. There were the billions of euros in corporation tax and the thousands of jobs. Now the US multinational is reporting hundreds of millions of euros’ worth of renewable energy contracts. Thomas has the details.

In the second edition of our new podcast series Brand Matters, Alison spoke to Rory Hamilton. The co-founder of Boys + Girls has worked on some of the most creative brand marketing in recent years, and he talked about where the ideas come from and how they led to his favourite campaigns.

DCC delivered its 30th full-year financial results today since it listed on the stock market. Its chief executive Donal Murphy explained how the business has grown consistently and what it wants to do next.