The Irish premier has apologised to the victims, survivors and families of the Stardust fire tragedy, saying the state failed them.

Forty-eight people were killed when the blaze ripped through the nightclub in Dublin in 1981.

After a more than 40-year campaign for justice, last week an inquest found that the 48 victims had been unlawfully killed.

On Tuesday, Taoiseach Simon Harris said the state failed the families of the Stardust tragedy when “you needed us the most”.

Politicians and others gathered in the Irish parliament applauded and got to their feet to welcome the Stardust families who had gathered in the public gallery and the distinguished visitors’ gallery

“I know there have been many times when you thought this day would never come,” Mr Harris told them.

“I know you were forced to endure a living nightmare which began when your loved ones were snatched from you in a devastating fire.

“Their unfinished stories became your story. The defining story of your lives and the lives of your parents and other family members who left this life before ever seeing justice.

“I am deeply sorry you were made to fight for so long that they went to their graves never knowing the truth.

“Today we say formally and without any equivocation, we are sorry.

“We failed you when you needed us the most, from the very beginning we should have stood with you but instead we forced you to stand against us.”

Mr Harris said he hoped the apology and statements in the Dail help the Stardust families heal.

“I truly hope that the days since last Thursday have marked a turning point and here today in Dail Eireann we finally begin to put things right,” he said.

“To bring you in from the cold and end the neglect of 43 years waiting and fighting for the only thing you ever wanted, the truth. Nothing else. No other agenda, just the truth.”

He continued: “I am so deeply sorry that your first bid for justice ended with suspicion being cast on those who had died or survived on that catastrophic night, with your pain and your grief compounded by stigma and rejection.

“Families were forced to fight for decades to obtain the vindication that you won last Thursday when the inquest returned a verdict of unlawful killing in the case of your 48 family members.

“For all of this, as Taoiseach on behalf of this state, I apologise unreservedly to all the families of the Stardust victims and all the survivors for the hurt that was done to them and for the profoundly painful years of struggle for the truth.”

Minister for Transport and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan described an “incredibly important day” for the families.

However, he said he is conscious that any sense of relief brought by the official apology to the families in the Irish parliament is “tempered by the fact that they (the families) had to wait for far, far too long to hear it”.

“The organs of the Irish state didn’t respond when repeatedly confronted by contradictory evidence,” Mr Ryan said.

“It’s a sobering indictment of our integrity as a nation and one that we must reflect upon, uncomfortable though it may be for many of us in the most powerful positions.”

He said last week’s inquest findings confirmed what the families “had known for decades”, that their loved ones had been unlawfully killed.

A previous finding in 1982 said the fire had been started deliberately, a theory the families never accepted.

That ruling was dismissed in 2009, leading to the latest inquests for the victims, who were aged from 16 to 27 and mostly came from the surrounding north Dublin area.

Last Thursday, the jury in the inquest returned a verdict that all 48 victims were unlawfully killed.

A majority decision from the seven women and five men found that the blaze, which broke out in the early hours of Valentine’s Day 1981, was caused by an electrical fault in the hot press of the bar.

Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien said it is right and fitting for the Irish parliament to apologise, “however late in the day”.

“In responding to the Stardust tragedy our state did not live up to the principles of justice, its core values, nor on the decency that we owe every person,” the Dublin Fingal TD said.

“The victims, their families, their friends, and their community were let down.

“This failure is a matter of deep and lasting regret and shame for our state and all of us who represent it. The state’s response was utterly lacking in compassion and understanding.

“Even worse, it compounded the trauma with grievous mistakes, the baseless findings of probable arson that cast scurrilous aspersions of guilt on an entire community.

“The paucity and the complexity of the state compensation, the sheer amount of time it has taken us to get to today’s apology. We owed all of you so much more.”

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald said that the “big lie” that the fire had been caused by arson began to spread soon after the fire.

“It was a lie repeated over and over,” Ms McDonald said.

“It smeared, it criminalised the victims and survivors suggesting that one of their number was responsible.

“It was a lie that devastated families and further traumatised survivors. To this day those families and survivors still ask who crafted that lie? Who spun it, who spread it and why? What was their motive? And who were they protecting?

“Forty-three years on and they still don’t have the answer to those questions.

“In November 1981, the original tribunal presided over by Justice Ronan Keane concluded that the fire was probably caused by arson. The big lie then became the state’s official position.”

Lisa Lawlor, who was 17 months old when her parents Francis and Maureen Lawlor died in the Stardust fire, said she is “very, very happy” with the Taoiseach’s apology.

Ms Lawlor carried 49 red roses into the Dail to represent the 48 victims as well as the unborn baby of Caroline Carey, who was four-and-a-half months pregnant when she died.

“I am very honoured to be here. We have waited so long for this and have waited so long for something like this, especially me the Stardust baby, the only orphan,” Ms Lawlor said.

“Losing both of them on the one night has been horrific. I can’t describe it to you but I am vindicated and I know they are and I know they are around me.”

She said that Mr Harris struck the right tone.

Ms Lawlor added: “We will discuss with our lawyers the next move but I am very happy with today.”