€24 million redress scheme announced for Stardust families

A €24 million redress package has been approved for families of victims of the Stardust fire.

Agreed with the families, the ex-gratia redress scheme will see each of the 48 families receive €500,000.

A separate redress scheme will be made available to those who survived the fire.

48 young people died in a fire that broke out in the early hours of Valentine’s Day in 1981.

Cabinet signed off on the package, which follows in the wake of Taoiseach Simon Harris issuing an official state apology in April.

Earlier this year, the decades-long search for justice by the victim’s family finally came to an end after an inquest found that the fire was the result of an electrical fault, putting an end to over 40 years of unanswered questions as to why the fire broke out in February 1981.

5 options were open to the jury: unlawful killing, accidental death, misadventure, an open verdict or a narrative verdict. 

The jury came to a unanimous decision that the fire was an accident, and returned a verdict of unlawful killing.

Dr Myra Cullinane, who oversaw the inquests, said of the victims “it is their lives that we’ve sought to vindicate by means of these inquests”

The Stardust inquest was the longest in Irish history.

For over four decades, families sought to get an explanation as to why the fire broke out, with the initial 1982 tribunal into the fire proving lacking and leaving many questions unanswered.

A new inquest was ordered in 2019 by the government, which concluded in April of this year. 

Taoiseach Simon Harris said that “no sum of money can replace the loss of a loved one”.

“The state understands very clearly and I understand extraordinarily clearly having met with the families, that you can never put any price or any amount on the loss of a life.”

Stardust survivor and campaigner Antoinette Keegan told RTÉ “you can’t put a price on a life. We were never in this for money, all we ever wanted was truth and justice.”

A statement from Government read “the finalisation of this redress package is the culmination of a series of steps the Government has 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.”

Darragh Mackin from Phoenix Law, who represented 47 of the 48 families affected in legal proceedings, said the compensation “is reflective of the unprecedented miscarriage of justice bestowed on these families”.

“It is impossible to put a value on the loss these families have sustained,” he said.

“However, these payments go a considerable way to providing support to these families for all their relentless efforts and life investment, which they so courageously devoted over the last four decades.”

He said that the payments to the victim’s families were a “gateway to a new dawn.” 

Lisa Lawlor, who lost her parents Francis and Maureen in the fire when she was 17 months old, told the Irish Sun “I am never going to be happy but I am content and very honoured that after 43 years we got to where we are today.

“I’m happy for my parents that we got them justice. The struggle was real but I think I can finally close the book now.”

The Irish Times reports that the redress scheme will be a two-phased approach, with the families engaging with the government on how exactly the redress scheme would be delivered.

The second phase of the scheme would involve an “exceptionality phase for survivors of the fire in special circumstances.”

The Taoiseach confirmed that his government would engage with the families over the course of the redress scheme.

Speaking during the official state apology in April, Harris said “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.”

He said the families “fought for the only thing you ever wanted, the truth. Nothing else. No other agenda, just the truth.”

“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.”