physically and emotionally . . . for the rest of their days.

Now try to imagine 25 years on that those bereaved middleclass families, with all their wealth and their access to the centres of power and to the courts, had received no proper compensation, no proper investigation into what happened to their loved ones, and no proper answers to all the questions that had tortured them for years.

It's just not imaginable. The history of Ireland for most of the 20th century was one in which whom you knew and how much money you had was vastly more important, in terms of being able to achieve anything with your life, than who you were. Fianna Fail's success was . . . and still is . . . based partly on its willingness to sell its soul to the highest bidder, partly on its ability to make ordinary voters believe that its politicians could help them to gain things to which they were often entitled already. If they weren't entitled, Fianna Fail politicians could help them out anyway, with a word in the right ears.

The result of decades of such clientelism and forced dependency was the development of communities effectively disenfranchised from the running of their affairs, from being able to demand proper standards of healthcare, job security, public safety, public transport, freedom from poverty and all the other paraphernalia of a civilised society.

If you had money, you had access to all of these things; in Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s, the vast majority of people didn't have the money and didn't have the access.

The people of Artane, Coolock, Raheny and the surrounding areas of Dublin didn't have the money and didn't have the access when on 13 February 1981, 48 of them went out for the evening, were locked into a burning discotheque and fried to death. Dozens of their friends and contemporaries . . . the sons and daughters of council workers, plumbers, bus drivers, firemen and the unemployed were badly injured, burnt to within an inch of their lives, and left scarred . . . physically and emotionally . . . for the rest of their days.

Twenty-five years on, they have received no proper compensation, no proper investigation into what happened to them and no proper answers to all the questions that have tortured them for years.

The Stardust fire of 14 February 1981 is the story that just won't go away. Last week, families of the dead picketed Dail Eireann as part of their campaign to have a new tribunal of inquiry opened into what happened. They have given the Taoiseach new evidence about the fire . . . information that wasn't available to Judge Ronan Keane's original inquiry . . . and hope that he and the government will agree to a new investigation.

The Stardust families believe, and they are undoubtedly correct in this, that they have been shabbily treated throughout the years by authorities who have never really been wedded to the idea that the truth should emerge about the fire.

The Keane inquiry "reached conclusions in ignorance of crucial evidence, " says Antoinette Keegan, a spokeswoman for the families. It was, she argues, deprived of vital information. "Its efforts to determine the cause and rapid development of the fire were rendered fundamentallly ineffective."

The years since the fire have only added to the trauma of the victims, who have experienced insult after injury in their quest for the truth.

There was the incomplete Keane tribunal, which found that the fire was caused by arson.

There was an offer of medical cards, which were withdrawn within a few months.

There was the massive compensation paid to the owners of the Stardust, though the relatives believed that the disco's dodgy electrical system caused the fire.

There was the pathetic compensation awarded to the relatives of the dead, paid out only under the strictest of conditions.

Now potentially comes the biggest insult of all, the possibility that the government will turn down the request for a new tribunal. If it refuses, it will be on the basis that the recently compiled evidence of several international experts doesn't amount to anything new, and that eyewitness statements refuting Ronan Keane's finding of arson aren't worth a hill of beans. There will probably be some off the record briefings to journalists about the costs of such tribunals and suggestions that the country couldn't stomach another one.

I think the country could stomach another one well enough.

While eyebrows are often raised about the length of inquiries into planning, it seems evident that a tribunal into the deaths of 48 young people might not cause too much public anxiety. (And if it did, so what? ) An inquiry operating under what Antoinette Keegan last week called "discreet and focused terms of reference" could probably be completed well within a calendar year. We would then get, one way or another, the final, most definitive account ever of what happened on St Valentine's Day 1981.

For Brid McDermott, who lost three children in the fire, such an account should be an entitlement.

"It broke up my marriage, " she said last week, recalling the tragedy. "My husband was a fireman and the fact that he was not there to save his children broke his heart. We want closure to this. I do and all the families do."

Is Bertie Ahern really going to deny her that, or are we to be reminded once again that when Fianna Fail is in power, it is who you know and how much you have that are important, not who you are and how much you have suffered. We already know that the Tanaiste is a cheerleader for inequality. We'll soon find out whether the Taoiseach is also.