Mr Justice McCloskey was due to make a ruling on remedy and costs today following his finding last year that the Ombudsman’s 2016 report was unlawful and procedurally unfair.

However, he instead addressed an application for recusal after it emerged he had acted on behalf of one of the applicants in a similar case against the Ombudsman while practising as a barrister in 2001.

Mr Justice McCloskey said: “Following anxious reflection, my evaluative conclusion is that our legal system will not have served the families well if they are not given the opportunity of having this case heard by a differently constituted court. While I am alert to the remedy of an appeal, this, in my view, is not sufficient to displace this assessment.”

He added that he did not feel he was setting a precedent: “The correct analysis, in my view, is that individual recusal decisions will rarely set any precedent for future cases. In law, context is everything.”

After the hearing, Niall Murphy of Belfast firm KRW Law, solicitor for the Loughinisland victims’ families, told BBC News: “What we have now is an opportunity for the Police Ombudsman and the families, as interested parties, to re-engage in a brand new reflection of the legal issues raised and we look forward to doing that as quickly as possible.”