A High Court judge has criticised the state for threatening five men with legal bills running to “many thousands of euros” unless they dropped a legal action alleging sexual abuse at Christian Brothers schools but has ruled it is not legally possible for them to resume their lawsuit.

The men, now in their fifties and sixties, dropped their cases after the state threatened to pursue them for costs if they lost. They tried to resume the lawsuit, however, following the landmark Louise O’Keeffe case in 2014, when the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that her rights had been