The High Court has ordered three plaintiffs to pay the State’s costs of several unsuccessful applications in proceedings under the Credit Institutions (Stabilisation) Act 2010. The costs are to be adjudicated if the parties cannot agree, and the order is stayed pending the outcome of any appeal to the Court of Appeal and/or the Supreme Court.
Ms Justice Marguerite Bolger made the order in a judgment delivered on 12 March 2025. It applies to Piotr Skoczylas, John Paul McGann and Tibor Neugebauer, who represented themselves. The judge also ordered them to pay the costs of the costs application.
The applications covered by the order included substitution and costs applications heard on 25 July 2024, applications to reopen the proceedings and under the slip rule, and additional applications or submissions arising separately from a Court of Appeal decision on adjudication of a previous costs order against Mr Skoczylas. Those matters were heard on 9 October 2024.
The judge said she had rejected the applications in a judgment of 3 December 2024. She had indicated then that the three applicants should be responsible for the State’s costs. In written submissions filed on 3 March 2025, Mr Skoczylas, adopted by the other two plaintiffs, argued that there should be no costs order.
The plaintiffs relied, among other points, on the State’s lack of opposition to substitution, the asserted public interest and novelty of the case, and their view that the court had erred in refusing their applications. The judge said the State’s lack of opposition did not itself justify making no costs order, and that arguments already decided in December did not establish a basis to depart from the usual rule that costs follow the cause.
On reopening, the judge had found that the Court of Justice of the European Union’s decision in Commission v Ireland did not establish exceptional circumstances permitting the High Court to reopen its judgment. She described submissions about what might have happened if the State had possessed the Apple monies in 2010 as speculative and lacking an evidential or legal basis. She had also found the case was not a test case and raised no truly novel or previously unexplored legal point.
The judge said disagreement with the court’s refusal of the slip-rule application was a matter for an appellate court. The costs order was made under section 169 of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015. The judgment does not set a sum payable; the costs are to be adjudicated in default of agreement.