Mr Justice Barry White at the Central Criminal Court has awarded four days' legal costs amounting to about €35,000 to a man acquitted by a jury of raping a woman in a luxury Co Clare hotel room.
Pádraig Dwyer BL, who defended the man, reminded Mr Justice White that he earlier said he "would not hang a dog on the evidence" that had been produced against his client by the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The 40-year-old Dublin man was acquitted by the jury within 39 minutes of commencing deliberations following seven days of evidence.
He had denied raping the woman in the hotel on March 31st, 2003 while she was asleep.
The 31-year-old woman had alleged that he had sexual intercourse with her by pretending to be another man with whom she had gone to sleep.
She said she only realised later that he was not the man she thought he was.
Mr Justice White said he was satisfied that the complainant had made attempts at a later stage to vary and contradict her initial statements to gardaí.
He also noted that in giving evidence, the man whom the complainant had spent the first night with and who she claimed to have mistaken the accused man for, moved away from his original statement.
He said that he felt that at this stage, "the time had come for the director not to proceed with the case". Accordingly, he said, he was agreeing to award the accused man costs from the time the second man, whom she mistook for the accused, gave evidence in court.
Mr Dwyer had submitted that Mr Justice White had discretion to do so "under exceptional circumstances" and said this was provided for by the judgment in Attorney General and Bell, 1969.
The exceptional circumstances in this particular case, Mr Dwyer said, included the judge's own description of the evidence given by the DPP; suspected collusion between the complainant and the man she said she mistook the accused for and vast discrepancies in the statements of the complainant, despite which the DPP proceeded with the case.
Mr Dwyer also noted that an alternative charge of sexual assault in which it was alleged that his client kissed the complainant without her consent had been offered by the DPP only in closing the prosecution case.
The charge had not been put on the indictment in the first place.
He said the fact the jury only took 39 minutes to acquit his client also vindicated his client's presumption of innocence. Justice would be done, he said, if his client was awarded costs for defending himself.