Stardust legal fees pass €1m

Cost of new inquests into tragedy

-  SYLVIA POWNALL

LEGAL fees for new inquests into the 1981 Stardust fire have topped €1million - with a start date for the long-awaited hearings yet to be agreed.

The Legal Aid Board has so far approved €893,407 in barristers' fees and €142,068 in solicitors' fees for victims' families since 2019.

Justice Minister Helen McEntee said legal aid had been granted to all families who applied to the coroner under new regulations introduced last year.

Inquests in 1982 recorded the cause of the 48 deaths in the nightclub inferno as arson but victims' families have campaigned for a new hearing.

In 2019, the Attorney General directed fresh inquests due to an “insufficiency of inquiry as to how the deaths occurred".