Cabinet approves compensation program worth 24 million euros for Stardust families

The Cabinet is expected to approve a compensation plan worth 24 million euros for the families of the victims of the Stardust fire.

A major fire in the Dublin nightclub in 1981 killed 48 people.

After a 40-year struggle for justice, an investigation in April concluded that the 48 victims had been unlawfully killed.

An earlier finding in 1982 said the fire had been deliberately set, a theory the families never accepted.

That ruling was overturned in 2009, leading to the most recent judicial investigation into the cases of the victims, who were aged between 16 and 27 and predominantly from the north Dublin area.

A majority jury decision concluded that the fire, which broke out in the early hours of Valentine's Day 1981, was caused by an electrical fault in the bar's hot press.

Days after the decision, Taoiseach Simon Harris apologised to the victims, survivors and families of the tragedy, saying the state had let them down.

An extraordinary cabinet meeting was scheduled for Friday afternoon to approve the plan, which was agreed in a series of meetings with activists.

If the total were divided equally among the 48 people who died in the fire, each family could receive compensation of 500,000 euros for the deaths of their loved ones.