THE JURY AT the Stardust inquest will continue considering their verdicts into the causes of death of the 48 victims of the fire for a tenth day tomorrow.

The jurors have now entered their third week of deliberations. 

The panel of seven women and five men spent about four hours deliberating today before returning to the court at 4pm. 

Before discharging them for the day, Coroner Dr Myra Cullinane told the jurors she would address them tomorrow in relation to the progress they are making.

“We’ll see how things stand at that point, in case there are further matters that I need deal with,” she said.

The inquest, which has been sitting for almost a year, has heard 95 days of evidence from 373 witnesses. 

Dr Cullinane has previously told the jury that they must determine the identity, date and place of death and the circumstances surrounding the death of each of the 48 young people who lost their lives when a fire swept through the Artane venue in the early hours of Valentine’s Day, 1981.

The jury must also record a verdict in relation to the deaths. 

They were told that the verdicts they can return are accidental death, death by misadventure, an open verdict, a narrative verdict and unlawful killing. 

Dr Cullinane said the latter was markedly different from the other four and if the jury returned this verdict, they had formed the view that the law had been broken in a serious fashion. 

The panel were told that the standard of proof for this verdict was beyond reasonable doubt, while the standard for the other verdicts is the balance of probabilities. 

The jury will continue their deliberations tomorrow.