Christine Keegan remembers exactly what her teenage daughters were wearing the night they went to a disco-dancing competition 20 years ago at their local nightclub.

"I remember Mary had a pink suit on her, neat with a jacket. And little Martina, she was really glamorous. She was in her lurex trousers, her hair all done up and she forgot her belt - a pink belt and Lorraine ran after them up the road: `There's your belt,' she said."

Three of the Keegan girls went out that night. Antoinette, now 39, survived with serious injuries.

They went every Friday night, says Christine. "There was no other entertainment for the young people in the area then, only the Stardust. Everyone looked forward to going there. They'd come back always well after 1 a.m. and I used to sit up and wait for them."

Throughout our conversation at the family home in Coolock, Christine barely smiles. She's well dressed, and clearly takes care of her looks, but her eyes are almost vacant.

"That night, well, I'd fallen asleep and when I woke up and looked at the clock it was 2.15 a.m. I thought they must have gone for food or something and went on up to bed." Her husband, who worked nights at the local Cadburys factory, overheard two workers at about 3 a.m. say the Stardust had burnt to the ground. He made straight for home.

The porch light was always turned off when the girls had come home, says Christine. "When John saw the porch light still on he knew something was wrong. He checked the girls' beds and when they weren't in them he came straight into me, woke me up and told me to get my clothes on.

"We went straight up in the car to the Stardust. Oh, I've never seen anything like it my life. Ambulances, fire engines, taxis, cars, people screaming. I was only interested though in getting mine out. One of the men told us: `The best thing you can do is go to the hospitals.'

"I thought everyone got out, never thought my children wouldn't be all right. So we went on our tour of the hospitals."

When they found Antoinette at Dr Steeven's Hospital all they could recognise were the braces on her teeth, so badly burnt and discoloured was her skin. There were tubes into her mouth but she managed to nod "No", that she did not know where her sisters were. The last time she had seen them the DJ in the Stardust had told everyone not to panic, that there was a small fire but to hold hands and form a chain. Antoinette had been clasping their hands when part of the ceiling collapsed and mass panic ensued.

The parents were advised to go to the city morgue where they waited until 4 p.m. on Saturday before being called.

"The man came out with two plastic bags. There was Martina's ring, with MK on it, in one and a necklace with hearts on it in the other. Mary had had on her a necklace with mauve hearts but the mauve was melted off."

Uncertain whether it was Mary's necklace, Christine brought nine-year-old Lorraine in and she identified the faded remains as her sister's necklace. Told that they could not go in to see their daughters' bodies, all they took home were the two plastic bags. "The garda there told us: `You go home and remember them the way they were'."

Her husband, John, was "torn apart" by the grief and though one of the strongest campaigners for the Stardust victims and their relatives, he died just five years after the tragedy at the age of 49.

Christine developed psoriasis and Antoinette spent almost a month in hospital and effectively lost the use of one of her lungs. She doesn't like to speak about the Stardust, saying simply: "I feel guilty - I got out and they didn't."

If it hadn't been for her youngest child, Damian, then aged three, Christine doesn't think she could have survived. "I had to be there, to rear him."

At the Stardust Victims' Compensation Tribunal the Keegans were awarded £7,500 for each of their dead daughters.