The High Court has proposed an order requiring the Minister for Justice to decide Muhammad Shahid Arshad’s application for Irish citizenship, after finding that the almost five-year delay had become egregious. The precise form of the order and costs were left for further submissions.
In a judgment delivered on 28 June 2022, Ms Justice Niamh Hyland refused the relief sought by Amardeep Singh and Katarzyna Barbara Zydek, whose cases were heard alongside Arshad’s. All three had received letters saying the Minister proposed to grant their naturalisation applications, subject to completion of the application process. The judge held those letters did not amount to grants or create an entitlement to citizenship; statutory requirements, including good character and a declaration of fidelity, remained.
Arshad applied in October 2017. The Department began raising questions about his marriage to Irish citizen Sylvia Coleman in correspondence from December 2020, and sought further information. The judgment records that the Department was investigating the marriage and that An Garda Síochána was assisting its enquiries. The judge treated this as a Department investigation, not a Garda investigation. The Department had received an anonymous email in October 2018 alleging a marriage of convenience and that Arshad had a wife and child in Pakistan; these were allegations, not findings.
The court accepted there was a reason for delay: the ongoing investigation. But the Minister had not explained its progress or why a decision could not be made, and there had been no update since correspondence in 2021. The judge found that, considered against the full period since the application, the delay amounted in effect to a refusal to decide. She said Arshad was entitled to a decision, while rejecting relief that would require the Minister to grant citizenship or declare him entitled to it.
Singh had applied in April 2018 and Zydek in February 2019. Their applications were also held up amid an ongoing Garda investigation into the authenticity of their marriage. The court found the delay did not yet justify an order compelling a decision, noting the investigation remained active and, in Zydek’s case, that she had been arrested and questioned in September 2021. The judgment did not determine whether either marriage was fraudulent.
The judge also criticised the Department’s earlier explanations for the stalled applications, which referred to general processing delays without explaining the investigations. She noted that applicants learned of the investigations only after proceedings had begun and said clearer communication would have been preferable.