A court in Belgium has found the director of the Leuven Institute for Ireland in Europe guilty in the case of a fire which killed two Irish students in the university city in 2014.
Malachy Vallely was the owner of the building in which Dace Zarina and Sara Gibadlo died in the early hours of the morning of 31 January.
He was also a director of the institute, known as the Irish College.
The court also found the institute criminally responsible for the deaths of the two students.
Vallely was given a one-year jail term, suspended, and was fined €6,000.
He was not present when the verdict was delivered this morning by a panel of three judges.
The Leuven Institute was fined €60,000.
An Irish student, Shane Bracken, was also found guilty of causing involuntary death due to lack of due caution.
He was given a three-month suspended sentence and fined €600. At a hearing in June lawyers for the two families argued that it was Bracken's cigarette which had caused the blaze.
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Ms Zarina and Ms Gibadlo were on a placement at the Leuven Institute as part of a business degree in catering and hotel management at the Galway and Mayo Institute of Technology.
Lawyers for the family say they are now considering legal action against GMIT.
A hearing will take place in November in Leuven during which the families may take civil proceedings against Vallely and the institute through the Belgian system.
Ms Zarina, who was 22, and 19-year-old Ms Gibadlo, were both asleep in a shared room when the fire broke out at 6am.
They were later found dead in an adjoining bathroom.
During the hearing in June, prosecutors described Vallely as a "slum landlord" and said both he and the institute were guilty of neglect.
Ms Zarina's parents, Sanita and Vadislav, and Ms Gibadlo's parents Joe and Gosha, and her sister Maggie, were all in attendance at the verdict at Leuven Correctional Court this morning.
Their Irish solicitor Colin Lynch was given a 30-page written verdict in Flemish which he will translate and study.
Speaking outside the court this afternoon, Mr Lynch said that the families are only now getting an understanding of the circumstances surrounding the tragedy.
Colin Lynch,solicitor for the Zarina and Gibadlo families, says that the families are only now getting an understanding of their tragic loss pic.twitter.com/oSW4OLMAJq
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) September 5, 2017
Belgian lawyers representing the families described Vallely's sentence as "harsh", saying that neither he nor the Leuven Institute for Ireland in Europe had shown any remorse.
According to a brief summary of the verdict by Mr Lynch, the court said both Vallely and the institute were guilty of "multiple breaches" of fire and building safety regulations.
Lawyers regarded Bracken's sentence as more lenient since he had expressed remorse for what happened.
It is understood the court strongly rejected any notion that the two women had not responded quickly enough because of alcohol consumption, a claim made by lawyers representing both Vallely and the institute during the hearing in June.
Both Vallely and the Institute have 30 days in which to appeal.
