The High Court has ordered Eamonn Butterly to pay the costs incurred by families of the 47 people who died in the Stardust nightclub fire for their representation at his March 2024 judicial review leave hearing. The award is limited to one senior counsel, one junior counsel and a solicitor, and the amount is to be adjudicated if the parties cannot agree.
In a judgment delivered on 24 July, Mr Justice Tony O’Connor said the families had been parties to the leave application because they attended and made submissions, and the applicant and court had acquiesced in that participation. The judge said the families had a clear interest in the application and would have been seriously affected if leave had been granted. Their submissions also helped the court deliver a reasoned judgment overnight while minimising delay to the inquests.
The March application sought judicial review relief effectively directing the Dublin District Coroner to tell the jury that unlawful killing was not an available verdict. On 28 March, the court refused the reliefs sought. The July costs judgment does not revisit that refusal or determine the merits of the underlying challenge.
The court rejected the argument that the families’ legal fees might already be covered through legal aid or State funding. It said any entitlement to funding for inquest proceedings did not establish that all fees for resisting the separate High Court application would be recovered. The court did not assess the fees; that task was left to the High Court Costs Adjudicator. It also declined to resolve whether work done for the inquests duplicated work for the leave hearing.
The applicant had argued that the leave application was ex parte under the court rules and that, had it been adjourned to put the families on notice, he could have filed evidence to contest their concerns about delay and the jury. The judge found that the way the application proceeded allowed the court to hear it as though it were on notice to the Coroner and families. He made no ruling on the applicant’s “catch 22” argument about the timing of the challenge, saying no issue on that point then arose.
A separate question remained: who should pay the families’ costs of the written and oral submissions that led to the July judgment. The court said it would hear the parties on 31 July 2024 if the applicant wished to argue for a different order. The judgment records no decision on that further costs issue.