The Supreme Court has dismissed another application by Denis Riordan arising from his unsuccessful constitutional challenge and has imposed new restrictions on his ability to bring further proceedings against the State and other named parties.
Riordan asked the court to stay costs orders made against him, set aside Supreme Court judgments and orders from November 1998 and May 1999, and reinstate his appeal for hearing by what he described as the “full Supreme Court”.
The underlying proceedings concerned his claim that the 19th Amendment of the Constitution Act 1998 purported to permit constitutional amendment otherwise than through the referendum procedure in Article 46. The High Court rejected that claim, and the Supreme Court dismissed his appeal in May 1999.
Riordan later sought to have that decision set aside, alleging that the judges had delivered “corrupt judgments” and acted with bad faith. That application was refused in June 2000.
In the present motion, he argued that the 2000 ruling was defective because it had been delivered by three judges and contended that the current application also required a larger court.
Chief Justice Keane, delivering the court’s judgment, rejected that argument. The court held that legislation expressly allows many Supreme Court matters to be determined by divisions of three or five judges. Only specified constitutional matters require at least five judges, and the present motion did not fall into those categories.
The court therefore dismissed the motion. It then addressed Riordan’s repeated efforts to reopen concluded litigation.
A 1999 order had already prevented him from starting proceedings against parties to the case in the High Court without prior leave. The Supreme Court now extended the restriction, citing its inherent jurisdiction to prevent abuse of process and protect others from unnecessary harassment and expense.
Riordan was restrained from bringing specified proceedings in either the High Court or Supreme Court against the parties, office-holders, the Oireachtas, Government, its members or Ireland without prior Supreme Court permission, apart from proceedings concerning taxation of costs.