Environmental and community groups who lose cases in the courts despite taking them in the public interest are being unfairly left with "crushing legal bills", the Friends of the Irish Environment group has claimed. It has a lodged a formal complaint with the UN High Commissioner, Mrs Mary Robinson, complaining that the awarding of costs against such litigants violates human rights.

The complaint has been supported by 25 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and Save Galway Bay Group, which were involved in high-profile cases and face legal bills estimated at more than £3 million.

FIE claims that "Ireland is violating the human rights of environmental and other public interest plaintiffs who attempt to go to the national courts to vindicate the public interest". This, it added, is out of line with other developed countries which do not award costs against plaintiffs who fail in public interest actions.

"When the fear of a crushing burden of costs is added to other disincentives the effect is that only the wealthy have genuine access to the national courts," FIE spokesman Mr Frank Corcoran told The Irish Times.

He noted that Mrs Robinson had stated in a message to an NGO meeting coinciding with a pan-European environment ministers' conference in June that a good environment was "a fundamental right" and suggested European countries might explore the US system whereby environmental interest groups taking a public interest action are not liable for legal costs.

In its letter to Mrs Robinson, FIE says Ireland is unusual in Europe in that an ordinary citizen or a community group working on a voluntary basis in the public interest is often faced with having to pay the costs of both sides at the end of unsuccessful litigation. "This means that even established and representative community groups are now unwilling to go to court to exercise their rights," it adds.

In addition, FIE claims that Irish courts have been reluctant to allow Irish citizens or voluntary groups to proceed to court even on the basis of European environmental law. "At the same time, the national courts are not referring valid and well-conceived issues of European law to the courts of justice," it contends.

FIE says it hopes an Irish plaintiff will come before the European Court of Human Rights to gain a hearing on the problem. It acknowledges Mrs Robinson has to deal mainly with gross human rights violations. Notwithstanding this, it believes the costs problem was distorting the administration of justice in Ireland.