Fire authorities may be held liable for damages including loss of life where they have failed to inspect property and enforce fire regulations, former chief justice Ronan Keane said yesterday.
Delivering the keynote address to the Chief Fire Officers' Association, Mr Keane, who chaired the Stardust Tribunal of Inquiry 25 years ago, was responding to concerns that lack of adequate enforcement could lead to a similar tragedy.
The conference had earlier heard there were just seven fire safety officers whose duty it was to inspect and enforce fire regulations across Dublin. Association president Jim Dunphy had also told delegates that, as recently as last year, 1,600 people had been at a disco in Co Clare where fire doors were locked.
Mr Keane warned that pleading a lack of resources may not be an adequate defence in law. He maintained that once powers had been vested in the fire authorities, they "could be made significantly amenable in damages for their failure to use their powers or the use of them in a negligent manner, if death, injury or serious damage to property is the consequence".
Mr Keane also said the fire authority could be liable if there was no proper means of escape and the authority had either not carried out an inspection or the inspection had been inadequate. But he warned owners and occupiers that having a fire safety certificate did not imply an immunity.
"That the primary responsibility for ensuring the fire safety of all buildings rests on the owners and occupiers in the first place, and in the case of new buildings on those who design and construct them, is obvious," he said.
Mr Keane said that in the years since the Stardust disaster, "the entire landscape of regulation" had altered out of all recognition.
But he said that "without an adequate machinery of enforcement to ensure compliance by all concerned, with the requirements of fire safety in general . . . the lives of people will continue to be dangerously at risk".