Stardust jury retires for weekend
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The jury has retired for the weekend at the Stardust inquests and will resume on Monday following around 10 hours of deliberations this week.
Coroner Myra Cullinane fielded a number of queries from the jury on Friday as it continues deliberating on its verdicts, before it retired at 4pm.
In the early hours of February 14, 1981, at the close of a disco dancing competition, a fire was spotted in the popular Stardust ballroom in Artane, north Dublin. It resulted in the deaths of 48 people.
Following a long and sustained campaign by families of victims, then attorney general Seamus Woulfe granted the fresh inquests into the deaths of the 48 Stardust victims in September 2019.
He said there had been an “insufficiency of inquiry” into their deaths at the original inquests in 1981, and directed the coroner to hold fresh inquests, saying that it was “in the public interest and in the interests of justice”.
Having sat for over 120 days and heard from over 370 witnesses, the jury began deliberating on Wednesday, April 3, on the verdicts.
Dr Cullinane has told the jury there are five options open to it — accidental death, misadventure, unlawful killing, an open verdict, and a narrative verdict. She has also said the jury must be unanimous when it returns its findings and verdict.
The inquests will continue next week.