The High Court ruled that two judicial review cases brought for minor applicants were not moot after the Minister granted them and their mother temporary permission to remain in Ireland for three years. The decision concerned an application for costs after the cases had been withdrawn. It did not determine whether the Refugee Appeals Tribunal’s decisions were lawful or decide the applicants’ asylum claims.
The applicants, identified in the judgment as I.E. and G.E., are Nigerian nationals who brought the cases through their mother and next friend, E.E. They sought to challenge separate Tribunal decisions refusing their claims. The judgment says the children’s claims were substantially based on their mother’s stated fear that they would face human sacrifice by a cult if returned to Nigeria.
In June 2014, the Minister revoked the mother’s deportation order and granted her temporary permission to remain on a Stamp 4 basis for three years, from 18 June 2014 to 18 June 2017. The permission was extended to the children, expressly without prejudice to their ongoing legal proceedings against the Tribunal.
The applicants’ lawyers said the permission meant the children were no longer exposed to return and argued the cases had become moot. They sought costs, submitting that the Minister’s action had unilaterally brought the proceedings to an end. The respondents disputed that the cases were moot, arguing that refugee status carried rights not provided by temporary permission, and that the Minister’s decision was separate from the Tribunal’s decisions under challenge.
The court agreed that the cases remained live. It found that temporary leave did not provide rights equivalent to those of recognised refugees and did not restore the applicants’ asylum claims. If the judicial reviews had succeeded, the matters could have been remitted and the children could have presented their claims again. By withdrawing the cases after accepting temporary permission, the applicants had abandoned that possibility.
The judgment therefore rejected the premise that the proceedings had become moot through State action. It did not award the applicants costs or resolve the underlying judicial reviews; the source records no further order on those matters.