A €24 million redress package has been approved by Government for the families of victims of the Stardust disaster.
Forty-eight people died as a result of the fire in the Stardust nightclub in north Dublin in the early hours of February 14th, 1981.
Earlier this year, Taoiseach Simon Harris delivered a State apology to the families of victims for how they were treated in the decades afterwards, saying “We failed you when you needed us the most”.
On Friday, Cabinet ministers signed off on a scheme of ex gratia redress awards totalling €24 million which was agreed with the families’ legal representatives.
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A Government statement said finalising the redress package was the culmination of a series of steps it had taken “to recognise the State failure to provide truth and justice over more than 40 years to the families whose 48 relatives were killed in a fire, which was subsequently found by inquest to be unlawful killing.”
Speaking after the incorporeal Cabinet meeting that approved the redress scheme, Mr Harris said: “There is no sum of money can in any manner or means replace the loss of a loved one”.
He added it is important after the verdict at in inquest the of unlawful killing and the State apology “that there is a recognition, through redress, of that pain and that hurt that the families have experienced.”
Families of the victims conducted a decades-long campaign to have a 1982 tribunal finding that the most “probable” cause of the fire was arson overturned. This finding was not removed from the public record by the Oireachtas until 2009.
In 1982, 48 inquests were heard. They lasted about 15 minutes each with verdicts providing just medical causes of death. These inquests did not address the cause or spread of the fire.
Fresh inquests were not directed to take place until 2019.
In April, a jury at Dublin Coroner’s Court delivered a verdict of unlawful killing in respect of each of the 48 people, aged between 16 and 27, who died. The jury found that the cause of the fire was an electrical fault in a hot-press in the main bar.
After Friday’s Cabinet meeting the Taoiseach, Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman and Minister for Justice Helen McEntee welcomed the conclusion of discussions with the representatives of the Stardust families on redress arrangements.
Solicitor Darragh Mackin, who led the negotiations on behalf of the families, said the redress package was “the crystallisation of the intense and relentless engagement” and “reflective of [an] unprecedented miscarriage of justice”.
Plans for a redress scheme emerged in June.
Sara Moorehead, SC, a barrister specialising in mediation, professional negligence and insurance law, was appointed to engage on behalf of the State with the 45 families’ legal representatives.
Under the plans there was to be a “two-phased” approach to the engagement on redress.
Phase one would deliver “a single, non-scaled ex gratia payment in respect of each the 48 victims of the fire” and phase two would be an “exceptionality phase for survivors of the fire in special circumstances”.
Asked about phase two by reporters, Mr Harris said: “There will be subsequent engagement with the families’ representatives as was always intended on other issues.”
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