Families bereaved by the Stardust tragedy are to meet the Taoiseach today as part of a campaign to establish a new commission of inquiry into the fire which killed 48 people.
The meeting between members of the Stardust Victims' Committee and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern follows the 25th anniversary of the tragedy in February and the recent submission of evidence and pathologists' reports to the Government.
That new submission prepared by fire experts such as Prof Michael Delichatsios, Tony Gillick, Robin Knox and pathologist Dr Derek Carson is expected to be the central focus of today's meeting, which is the committee's first with Mr Ahern.
Six representatives from bereaved families also hope to discuss the possibility of exhuming the five unidentified victims of the fire tragedy buried in a communal plot at Sutton cemetery.
Families of the remaining victims are expected to stage a protest outside the Dáil tomorrow evening as the meeting continues within Government buildings.
In recent months, sources close to Mr Ahern have described the committee's submission, which aimed to establish how and where the fire started and to disprove the tribunal findings, which returned a verdict of probable arson, as "very substantial".
A meeting with the committee was, however, delayed until September due to the Taoiseach's diary commitments and the need to assess the submission.
In June, Mr Ahern wrote to the committee and signalled that the Government would seek expert advice about undertaking DNA testing on the five unidentified victims if a licence for exhumation is obtained.
Last night, Christine Keegan, whose daughters Mary and Martina died in the Stardust fire on February 14th, 1981, said there was almost unprecedented pressure on the Government to act upon families' questions after 25 years of campaigning for further inquiries.
"I really hope in my heart and soul that they will see sense to open up the tribunal again. We need the unidentified to be identified and we need answers so that we can start living our lives again," she said.
Another daughter, Antoinette Keegan, who survived the fire, said families had been forced to fundraise for every aspect of their campaign and pay international experts to contribute to their new report.
"All of us now have something we want to say to the Taoiseach. We want to tell him that we have been waiting for 25 years on the truth and we are not about to walk away now," she said. However, the Government has continually stated that an inquiry would be established only if "new evidence" was presented.
Should the Government reject the new submission, the committee has signalled it may lodge an appeal in the European courts under the Convention on Human Rights.
The submission, which the Government has been considering for some months, partly focuses on eight key minutes of evidence which families claim was "overlooked" by the original tribunal.
In particular, the submission draws on evidence that outside witnesses saw a fire at 1.30am, and how one survivor felt a heat surge at 1.33am, whereas the tribunal found the fire started at 1.41am under a seat.