The Attorney General will "look afresh" at a formal request from relatives of the Stardust victims to carry out a second inquest, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has told the Dáil.
The matter was raised during Leaders' Questions by Independent TD Tommy Broughan, after hundreds of people joined survivors and families of the nightclub fire victims in a protest to demand a new inquest.
Mr Varadkar said that while the Attorney General's office awaits a formal request for the fresh inquest, he would give it full consideration once received.
"I did speak to the Attorney General this morning. He will give it full consideration and will look at it with an open mind," Mr Varadkar said.
Mr Broughan said those representing the families had given formal notice that they intended to formally request a second inquest from the Attorney General, who has the power under the Coroner's Act to order a second inquest.
He added that in Northern Ireland there have been 56 occasions where a new inquest has been ordered.
Mr Varadkar told the Dáil that the Attorney General could only order a new inquest where there were sufficient grounds for doing so.
He also said the Attorney General had to act independently of Government, and he could not pressurise him on the matter.
Solidarity-People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett accused the Taoiseach of passing the buck on the issue after failing to live up to commitments in the programme for government to take regard of new evidence on the cause of the fire.
"37 years on, they are still fighting and now having to go to the Attorney General because your government failed on a promise," Mr Boyd Barrett told Mr Varadkar.
He called on the Taoiseach to give the families the Independent Commission of Investigation that they have requested.
Read more: What was the Stardust tragedy?
WATCH: @campaignforleo says AG will give "full consideration" to request to order fresh inquest into Stardust tragedy once received. Responding to @TommyBroughanTD who said Families and Victims Committee have received strong support from people of Derry and Hillsborough campaign pic.twitter.com/F7puZwqhH3
— RTÉ Politics (@rtepolitics) November 20, 2018
Hundreds of people joined survivors and families of the victims in a protest today to demand a new inquest.
48 young people died in the nightclub in Artane, Dublin, on St Valentine's Day 1981.
About 48,000 signatures were collected by the Justice for Stardust campaign group.
Families say they have new evidence, uncovered through freedom of information requests and previously unheard witness testimony, to warrant a new inquest, and have often claimed there was a cover-up by the government at the time.
On the march, public representatives from Sinn Féin, Solidarity and People Before Profit, as well as folk singer Christy Moore, walked with the families from Westland Row to the Attorney General's office in Dublin to deliver the signatures.
Mr Moore, who wrote campaign song They Never Came Home, said he was happy to support the families in their campaign.
"I am hopeful. This has been going on far too long, it's time these families were given the truth, they need some peace of mind," he said.
Antoinette Keegan, whose sisters Mary, 19, and Martina, 16, were killed in the fire, made an impassioned speech on the steps of the Attorney General's office, joined by her 82-year-old mother Christine.
"In the aftermath of the fire we trusted the State," she said.
"We remain to this day, dismissed and fobbed off, we have been systematically abused for 37 years.
"We were left like lambs to the slaughter, but we never gave up, and we never will until we get truth and justice."
Officials originally ruled that the cause of the fire was arson, a theory that was never accepted by the families.
It was later ruled out following a fresh inquiry in 2009.
Investigations showed a number of escape routes from the dance hall were blocked as emergency doors were locked with chains.
Concerns have also been raised about the investigation of the scene, which allowed politicians and media to walk through the building days after the fire.
On the steps of the Attorney General's office, a young relative read out the names of the 48 people who died, before Selina McDermott, who lost her two brothers and sister in the fire, read a message from the mothers who lost their children.
"We have learned that the Stardust is something we can never get over, but something that we carry," she said.
"The name Stardust is a cruel reminder of the horror that we have suffered.
"Why then have we been left to carry such a sorrowful burden for so long without respite?"
